HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 1 (first of seven parts), by Ann Cavanaugh

Picking up The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, decades after a first reading, was a bit of a revelation as I observed many points of intersection between this biblical poetic story and the ongoing trial/guilt of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake protagonist HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker). 

Sin, Guilt, Suffering…..In Job, suffering can be understood not as the outcome of sin but rather inextricably tied to life itself and incomprehensible in its meaning from a religious perspective. An understanding of suffering is demonstrated to be problematic in the Job story in that it is shown to not be available to logical analysis. Rather it is through suffering one can come to a deeper orientation to the ineffable. One might say a deeper humility in our sense of knowing that we do not know and this as the beginning of Wisdom. Wisdom, Sophia, The Feminine. And it is the Feminine to which Joyce is pointing us. 

Whether Joyce had intentionally drawn from this Old Testament (Hebrew Scripture) drama or, more likely the notion of original sin, which would have been out in front for him given his Jesuit education, it struck me that one of the many lenses through which we can read Finnegans Wake is the Jobean trial; which is at once a tale of a cruel set up by a jealous God and the existential suffering of Everyman. As with HCE, Job is up against accusations of guilt, being falsely accused by so called friends, and as he sees it, unfairly punished. Unlike HCE, who stammers out several possible alibis and then goes on to enumerate all the services he has provided to family and community, Job goes through a stage of demanding loudly, and in no uncertain terms, to be recognized for his righteousness or, at the least, not punished for what are minor infractions which are part and parcel of being human. While their defenses are similar their approaches are worlds apart. Job’s argument and indignation are reasonable within the context of an understood transactional relationship; he is full of “righteous” indignation. HCE in comparison has the tone of a quiet somewhat humorous ticking off of reasons why it could not have been him and even if it was him one should look at all the good stuff he has done. He comes across as a fully rounded human with his good points and his requisite flaws. 

The other major difference between these two characters is that HCE has, as it were, an awesome defense attorney in ALP (The Feminine, Anna Livia Plurabelle). She engages in actively defending and arguing for HCE and puts her argument in a letter for all to see. Job is alone in his righteousness and all abandon him including his wife, who attempts to disabuse him of his loyalty to God and friends, who reason he must be guilty to be so out of favor with God. One needs to remember to see both of these stories as parables and thus each character serves as stand-in for humanity writ large while at the same time both prompt us to ask the question of human guilt on the individual level, as well as to ponder what each view has to teach us. Job’s journey brings him ultimately in touch with a sense of humility. HCE seems to have a sense of humility from the start, in addition to the connection to the Feminine, and his light hearted humorous touch cannot be overlooked. Job is a person who sees the ebb and flow of life in that he has a sense of what his behavior has amounted to and, thus, of what he is justly deserving. In HCE we have man as tested by the ever changing/shifting fortunes of life and, in contrast to Job’s approach, someone who has adopted Joyce’s prescription for survival - “silence, exile and cunning. “ Like Joyce, HCE would rather persuade than demand.