Tag Archives: Forgiveness

Sierre But Saule: Better Call Saul and Finnegans Wake

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I recently finished watching the television series Better Call Saul. It was an excellent show that, in my estimation, exceeded its predecessor, the acclaimed Breaking Bad. Neither show is on the level of The Sopranos, but Better Call Saul had more interesting character moments than Breaking Bad and more compelling acting (especially from Rhea Seehorn, who was outstanding).

Concentrating on these elements of the show, I could not help but think about Finnegans Wake as I watched the “Brother Battle” — which is so central to Joyce’s novel — play out in Jimmy McGill’s (Saul’s) conflict with his brother, Chuck. And the role of Kim reminded me of the function of Anna Livia Plurabelle in the Wake, she who “gave him keen and made him able” (a pun that unites a reference to the battling brothers Cain and Abel with the keening of a widow and the encouragement of an enabler).

This post will discuss Better Call Saul in the context of the archetypes of Finnegan Wake. As such, it will contain spoilers for the show, and I recommend you view the entire series before reading the remainder of this post.

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“We’re Not Gonna Talk about Judy at All”

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The first time I saw the word “pentschanjeuchy” in Finnegans Wake I.1, I thought it simply referred to the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Thanks to my days in Catholic school, I had memorized the names of these books in order (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), and I recognized references to them in the lines just before “pentschanjeuchy” appeared. Why the weird spelling? Eh, who knows, I figured. Joyce can be weird. The Wake is a weird book.

Years later, I consulted annotations and was surprised to learn that this word is also a reference to a puppet show called “Punch and Judy”: “a traditional British slapstick puppet show; Punch is a hunchback [HCE symbol], Judy is his wife [ALP symbol].”

Okay, I thought. The dreamer’s mind contains both his ego and Anima, the feminine portion of the psyche (cue Buck Mulligan’s dirty joke from Ulysses: “Every man his own wife”).

I didn’t think that much of it, and I certainly never set out to learn much about Punch and Judy. Perhaps over the years I came across the idea that Punch is over-the-top violent, but it never interested me much. Flash forward to just the other week when I was reading The Magicians of Caprona with my daughter. This book is a fantasy story by Diana Wynne Jones, author of Howl’s Moving Castle, which I’ve written about here. In this story, the show Punch and Judy plays a rather large role, as one of the characters is a fan and collector of the puppets, and there’s a brilliant chapter later in the book where the show takes center stage.

When a character attends a Punch and Judy show early in the book, I was surprised to see a sentence announce that the character got to the front of the crowd and was “able to watch Punch beat Judy to death at the top of his little painted sentry-box.”

The content of the sentence is horrible, but the casualness with which it is relayed is funny (the essence of comedy is in contrasts, mismatches, and exaggerations). It also made me read up some more on Punch and Judy and ponder their connection to Finnegans Wake.

Read on for a few of my thoughts and my musings about the question of whether HCE is an abuser.

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The Baffling Yarn Sails in Circles

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Finnegans Wake II.3 is the longest chapter in the book: it’s nearly 1/6 of the length of the whole work. It’s also the densest chapter. The study chapter (II.2) may be the hardest to read, but I think this chapter is as dense as it gets. Words seem more packed with meaning than usual. The narrative, such as it is, continually confuses the present with the past. More so than any other chapter, it is a microcosm of the whole book.

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