The tragic earwig

I picked up this little gem from Clint Carroll on the Reading Finnegans Wake Facebook group.

I read that earwigs undergo “incomplete metamorphosis” ... a process called hemimetabolism. The earwig has no pupal stage and does not molt. Our earwig, then, old HCE, is incapable of complete metamorphosis or transformation. He simply is regardless of the costume he wears in the Wake or the particulars of the time or setting he finds himself in. He simply is ... like the earwig ... and this is why ALP’s speech in Book IV is so heartbreaking, so very lovely and generous and merciful.