Closer to Consciousness: Waking as the Žižekian Event in Finnegans Wake

Abstract

This article examines the end of Finnegans Wake , primarily ALP’s soliloquy, and the circular nature of the Wake through Slavoj Žižek’s theoretical work on the “Event.” Looking at the work as both a text and as a representation of a dream, reading it through this theory suggests a psychological and textual rift at the end of the novel. Day looms throughout the Wake as an approaching Event that will end the night, and ALP’s cries for remembrance suggest that the dream must end for a period of time that entails her possible obliteration, indicating a break in the circular structure of the text as well as the dissolution of the dreamworld in the narrative.