Abstract
James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is mainly about indecent behavior H. C. Earwicker committed while drunk, which is usually believed parallel with Adam’s sin, original sin of human kind. However, the details and the nature of the misdemeanor, as well as words and stories hidden in the text, indicate that it parallels mostly to the “original” sin committed by Noah, instead of Adam. This difference shows that Joyce composes and interprets human history in a new way in Finnegans Wake. His history begins from Noah’s family and has a dense sexual undertone because of Noah’s sin. In this book, Joyce also tries to end the original sin and gives human being a rebirth, not a religionary one but a literary and allegorical one.
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Notes
Dex at The Straight Dope Science Advisory Board indicates that on the severity of Noah's reaction, there are two main areas of speculation, one of which is that “Ham saw Noah having sex with someone other than Mrs. Noah” (Dex 2005/2010). However, I checked many printed materials and most of them only said that Noah had sex with his wife, though it was an indecent behavior at that time too (Ginzberg 1968, p. 80).
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Dai, C. The original sin in Finnegans Wake . Neohelicon 39, 475–483 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-012-0146-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-012-0146-9