Ulysses: An "Immoral" Book And Its Moral Greatness

James Joyce is a great master of literary innovation. Scholars and critics both home and abroad have done a lot of research on his innovations in style and writing techniques from the perspectives of text, culture, history, autobiography.In literary circle, Ulysses is an endless research source. Literary criticism has always been the mainstay of Ulysses studies. For example, its eternal mythic structure, the complex and profound themes and motifs, the distinctive characterization, its multi-perspective narration, its encyclopedic knowledge. But these are all the literary merits of Joyce's works and are all his means of writing. He is concerned more about moral state of modern society and the social, cultural and spiritual status of modern people, especially that of the common people. In Ulysses, Joyce illustrates a symbolic picture of all human history, which is simultaneously tragic and comic, heroic and cowardly, magnificent and dreary. It is essentially a study in compassionate humanism, by means of pity and salaciousness.Many critics said Joyce didn't put forward good strategies to solve the problems presented in his books. Indeed, the message conveyed in his books is simple, clear. A simple truth shines through his books. In Ulysses, Joyce depicts with "friendly-pity" an everyman, Mr. Bloom, who argues against violence and is willing to suffer and not to raise himself above others. His life philosophy is to love and to be gentle and kind.Joyce intended to "write a chapter of the moral history of my country." But his masterpiece, Ulysses, for a long time, is considered as a corrupt and immoral book, full of sordid details. In my view, Ulysses is actually a moral and spiritual autobiography of James Joyce. This thesis tries to analyze the ethical views of James Joyce, which are mainly reflected by Mr. Bloom in Ulysses.This paper intends to decode the ethical codes in Ulysses. I will mainly analyze the moral systems and values from three aspects.First, I will talk about the pursuit of the good. The novel redefines the traditional concept of a hero to emphasize not only pacifism, but profound commitment to family ties and passionate love within the commitment to marriage value, concern for the human need to others, sense of self, tolerance and decency.Secondly, Bloom's moral greatness is also demonstrated from his humanistic attitude towards others even animals. Third, Bloom's moral justice and moral courage to face the hard life lead to his moral victory but not a victory obtained by force in his life.The greatness of Joyce's works, so humanistic, is his justification of the commonplace. In his view, the ordinary is the extraordinary.The paper is governed by ethical literary criticism and based on Aristotle's ethical theory. The author of this paper will focus on decoding the moral system, the ethical meanings and values in Ulysses from the perspectives of moral humanism, moral obligation and moral courage, and find out the moral greatness of common people under Joyce's seemingly cynical.