Category:Finnegan

The first central character in the book is called Finnegan, identified as a hod carrier in Dublin, and seen as representing all builders (of all kinds and by extension, progenitors) throughout history. We meet him falling to his death from a scaffold or tower or wall. At his wake, in keeping with the comic song Finnegan's Wake that provided Joyce's title, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and he rises up again alive (Finnegan awakes).

This Finnegan is all men, and his fall is all men's fall. Subsequent vignettes in the first chapter show him as a warrior (in particular, as Wellington at Waterloo), as an explorer invading a land occupied by his aboriginal ancestors, and as the victim of a vengeful pirate queen (Grace O'Malley).

At the end of the first chapter, Joyce puts Finnegan back down again ("Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad"). A new version of Finnegan-Everyman is sailing into Dublin Bay to take over the story: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, whose initials HCE ("Here Comes Everybody") lend themselves to phrase after phrase throughout the book (Note they appear as "Howth Castle and Environs" in the opening sentence).