Everyone has faced their own trials and tribulations this year. And that is even without a global pandemic. Personally, I have been immunocompromised for over seven years now. I have a form of dysautonomia called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.  I have lived constantly in a state of fear of the world around me. When I was diagnosed, I consumed myself in fictional characters to feel some sort of sanity of a world that no longer made sense to me. But this year, the man who made me love reading, my father, was diagnosed with cancer. Now, in a pandemic that blindsided us all, worrying about my dad and myself, literature has never been more important in understanding the human condition and ourselves. Delving into realities that are different than our own, minds that are different than our own, help us to keep hope in our own world and understand the different perspectives and problems that others are facing.

            Surprisingly, I did not have to read that much Fiction for my classes this semester. Because of this, I really latched on to the ideas brought forth in our reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Although the obstacles faced in Ulysses are glaringly different than mine, we have many similarities. The feeling of isolation and loneliness is something I have not been able to shake throughout these past months. That feeling of slipping depression, that is amplified by that loneliness parallels the feelings of both Bloom and Stephen. In Proteus, we get a long stream of consciousness from Stephen, “His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless this till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds…You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover, slinging, the more the more” (page 40). I think this passage is important because Stephen is associating goodness with dark rather than the light. During this pandemic, the goodness that we are consuming in every day life is not necessarily light. I am thankful for the time spent with my family, but I despise that this deepening connection came from so much loss and despair. Goodness is subjective in Stephen’s mind it seems, as it has changed in mine as well. Even when lost and grieving, goodness does not need to appear in any specific form, as long as it appears at all. The idea of how literature has helped me in this time is brought forth by Stephen when talking about the role of artists, “Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves” (page 174). Writers have the ability to take the reader from whatever reality they are living, and divulging them in something completely different then their own. In this pandemic, it has been imperative to take myself out of my own reality and put myself in other’s shoes. Though the grief Stephen feels, and the isolation Bloom faces, for a paragraph it made me feel like my problems are not as significant as others. The tribulations I am facing could be much worse, and Fiction has helped me to realize the fortunate position I have truly been placed in. The last quote of the entire book, Molly’s monologue, encompasses not only the real meaning of life and the human condition, but it applies to our current world: “And Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and fist I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes” (pages 643-644). As I take it, Molly’s final monologue is a yes to life. A yes too the world, to love, strength. A yes to the world.

            Through Fiction, specifically through Ulysses, I have learned this year to understand others struggles. I have learned to understand the human condition: people are an evolving species but our moral values and what inherently makes us humans has stayed the same. We all strive for love, family, and a good world. I hope that in the post-pandemic world, that people will continue to strive in their goals but continue to hone the family values that have brought many together. We all wish to give and receive love, and we have seen an outpouring gesture of affection to those who are not usually celebrated. I hope that Fiction will become or continue to be a safe place for those who need to escape their own reality. Fiction helps make this path for the future because of the core fundamentals of humans that are carried without despite the plot of the story: love, life, beauty, strength.