Editing Finnegans Wake (section)

== Plot ==
''Finnegans Wake'' consists of seventeen chapters, divided into four Parts or Books. Part I contains eight chapters, Parts II and III each contain four, and Part IV consists of only one short chapter. The chapters appear without titles, and while Joyce never provided possible chapter titles as he had done for ''Ulysses'', he did title various sections published separately (see ''Publication history'' below). The standard critical practice is to indicate part number in Roman numerals, and chapter title in Arabic numerals, so that III.2, for example, indicates the second chapter of the third part.

Given the book's fluid and changeable approach to plot and characters, a definitive, critically agreed-upon plot synopsis remains elusive. The following synopsis attempts to summarise events in the book, which find general, although inevitably not universal, consensus among critics.

===Challenges of summary===
Joyce scholars question the legitimacy of searching for a linear storyline within the complex text of ''Finnegans Wake''.<ref>Levitt, M. P., ed., ''Joyce and the Joyceans'' ([[Syracuse, New York|Syracuse]]: [[Syracuse University Press]], 2002), [https://books.google.com/books?id=HGv74vHqMncC&pg=PA165&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 165].</ref>{{rp|165}} As [[Bernard Benstock]] highlights, "in a work where every sentence opens a variety of possible interpretations, any synopsis of a chapter is bound to be incomplete."<ref>Benstock 1965, p.6. {{cite web | url= https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AJoyceColl | title = Benstock, Bernard / Joyce-again's wake: an analysis of Finnegans wake, p. xvi | last= Benstock | first= Bernard | publisher= The James Joyce Scholars' Collection}}</ref> David Hayman has suggested that "For all the efforts made by critics to establish a plot for the ''Wake'', it makes little sense to force this prose into a narrative mold."<ref>Hayman, David. ''The "Wake" in Transit'', p.41, footnote 1.</ref> The book's challenges have led some commentators into generalised statements about its content and themes, prompting critic Bernard Benstock to warn against the danger of "boiling down" ''Finnegans Wake'' into "insipid pap, and leaving the lazy reader with a predigested mess of generalizations and catchphrases."<ref>Benstock 1965, p.4.</ref> [[Fritz Senn]] has also voiced concerns with some plot synopses, saying "we have some traditional summaries, also some put in circulation by Joyce himself. I find them most unsatisfactory and unhelpful, they usually leave out the hard parts and recirculate what we already think we know. I simply cannot believe that FW would be as blandly uninteresting as those summaries suggest."<ref name="senn">{{cite web| url=https://www.joycefoundation.ch/An%20Occasional/Abiko.htm| title=Fritz Senn and Finnegans Wake| access-date=19 November 2007| publisher=The Joyce Foundation| url-status=dead| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070822104433/http://www.joycefoundation.ch/An%20Occasional/Abiko.htm| archive-date=22 August 2007| df=dmy-all}}</ref>

The challenge of compiling a definitive synopsis of ''Finnegans Wake'' lies not only in the opacity of the book's language but also in the radical approach to [[Plot (narrative)|plot]] which Joyce employed. Joyce acknowledged this when he wrote to Eugène Jolas that:

<blockquote>"I might easily have written this story in the traditional manner{{nbsp}}... Every novelist knows the recipe{{nbsp}}... It is not very difficult to follow a simple, chronological scheme which the critics will understand{{nbsp}}... But I, after all, am trying to tell the story of this [[Chapelizod]] family in a new way.<ref>quoted in Norris, Margot, ''The decentered universe of Finnegans wake'', p. 2.</ref></blockquote>

While crucial plot points – such as HCE's crime or ALP's letter – are endlessly discussed, the reader never encounters or experiences them firsthand, and as the details are constantly changing, they remain unknown and perhaps unknowable. Joyce himself tacitly acknowledged this radically different approach to language and plot in a 1926 letter to Harriet Weaver, outlining his intentions for the book: "One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot."<ref name="modernworld">{{cite web |title=Joyce – Quotations |url=https://shipwrecklibrary.com/joyce/joyce-quotations/ |access-date=3 December 2007 |website=The Brazen Head |publisher=The Modern Word}}</ref> Critics have seen a precedent for the book's plot presentation in [[Laurence Sterne]]'s digressive ''[[The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman]]'', with Thomas Keymer stating that "Tristram Shandy was a natural touchstone for James Joyce as he explained his attempt "to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose" in ''Finnegans Wake''".<ref>Keymer, Thomas. ''Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: A Casebook'', Oxford University Press, 2006. {{ISBN|0-19-517561-1}}; [https://books.google.com/books?id=tEeIctgWeCEC&pg=PA14&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 14].</ref>

Despite Joyce's revolutionary techniques, the author repeatedly emphasized that the book was neither random nor meaningless; with [[Richard Ellmann]] quoting the author as having stated: "I can justify every line of my book."<ref>Ellmann 1983, p. 702.</ref> To Sisley Huddleston he stated "critics who were most appreciative of ''Ulysses'' are complaining about my new work. They cannot understand it. Therefore they say it is meaningless. Now if it were meaningless it could be written quickly without thought, without pains, without erudition; but I assure you that these 20 pages now before us [i.e., chapter I.8] cost me twelve hundred hours and an enormous expense of spirit."<ref>Deming, R. H., ed., ''James Joyce'' (London & New York: Routledge, 1970), [https://books.google.com/books?id=reZXAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT490 p. 490].</ref>{{rp|490}} When the editor of ''[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]]'' asked Joyce if the sketches in ''Work in Progress'' were consecutive and interrelated, Joyce replied "It is all consecutive and interrelated."<ref>Joyce, Letters III, page 193, note 8.</ref>

=== Part I ===
{{quote box|width=23em|In the first chapter of ''Finnegans Wake'' Joyce describes the fall of the primordial giant Finnegan and his awakening as the modern family man and pub owner H.C.E.|source= –[[Donald Phillip Verene]]'s summary and interpretation of the ''Wake''{{'}}s episodic opening chapter<ref>[[Donald Phillip Verene|Verene, D. P.]]. ''Knowledge of Things Human and Divine'', p. 5</ref>}}

The entire work forms a cycle, the book ending with the sentence-fragment "a way a lone a last a loved a long the" and beginning by finishing that sentence: "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." Joyce himself revealed that the book "ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence."<ref name="Joyce, Letters I, p.246">Joyce, ''Letters I'', p.246</ref> The introductory chapter (I.1) establishes the book's setting as "[[Howth Castle]] and Environs" (i.e. the [[Dublin]] area), and introduces Dublin [[hod carrier]] "[[Finnegan's Wake|Finnegan]]", who falls to his death from a ladder while constructing a wall.<ref>Finnegan is first referred to on p.4, line 18, as "Bygmester Finnegan"</ref><ref name="shorter">{{cite web|url=http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/shortwake.html |title=The Online shorter Finnegans Wake |access-date=19 November 2007 |publisher=Robot Wisdom |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071031033832/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/shortwake.html |archive-date=31 October 2007}}</ref> Finnegan's wife Annie puts out his corpse as a meal spread for the mourners at his [[Wake (ceremony)|wake]], but he vanishes before they can eat him.<ref name="shorter"/> A series of episodic [[Vignette (literature)|vignettes]] follows, loosely related to the dead Finnegan, most commonly referred to as "The Willingdone Museyroom",<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-8.htm pp. 8–10] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208124036/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-8.htm |date=8 December 2008 }}, which presents a guided tour through a museum in the [[Wellington Monument, Dublin|Wellington Monument]], which commemorates Finnegan's fall, retold as the battle of [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|"Willingdone"]] versus the [[Napoleon I of France|"Lipoleums"]] and "Jinnies" at [[Waterloo, Belgium|Waterloo]].</ref> "Mutt and Jute",<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-16.htm pp. 16–18] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208123909/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-16.htm |date=8 December 2008 }}, which describes a dialogue between respectively deaf and dumb [[indigenous peoples|aboriginal]] ancestors, who have difficulty hearing, seeing and understanding each other. Bishop characterises them as two prehistoric men who "babble and stammer imperceptively like [[Giambattista Vico|Vico]]'s men"; Bishop 1986, [https://books.google.com/books?id=QwTenyFeSeEC&pg=PT194&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 194].</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_n2_v28/ai_16528210/pg_1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080925002010/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2342/is_n2_v28/ai_16528210/pg_1 |url-status=dead |archive-date=25 September 2008 |title=The Mutt and Jute dialogue in Joyce's Finnegans Wake: Some Gricean Perspectives – author James Joyce; philosopher H.P. Grice |access-date=20 November 2007 |last=Herman |first=David |publisher=bnet Research Center |year=1994}}</ref> and "The Prankquean".<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw21.htm pp. 21–23] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131019202303/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw21.htm |date=19 October 2013 }}, which depicts Finnegan – under the name "[[Earl of Howth|Jarl van Hoother]]" – as the victim of a [[Gráinne O'Malley|vengeful pirate queen]], who arrives "three times at the Jarl's castle [..] each time asking a riddle and – upon the Jarl's inability to answer it – each time kidnapping a child, until the third visit results in a concession from the furious Jarl. Benstock 1965, p.268.</ref> At the chapter's close a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and "the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest",<ref>Bishop, John; collected in ''A Collideorscape of Joyce'', p.233</ref> persuading him that he is better off where he is.<ref>His mourners advise him: "Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad"; Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-24.htm p.24, line 16] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081208123950/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-24.htm |date=8 December 2008 }}</ref> The chapter ends with the image of the HCE character sailing into [[Dublin Bay]] to take a central role in the story.

[[File:Anna Livia Plurabelle.jpg|alt=Figure of a young woman sitting on a slope with legs crossed. It is in the middle of a rectangular fountain, surrounded by flowing water.|left|thumb|150px|[[Anna Livia (Monument)|Fountain in Dublin]] representing Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in ''Finnegans Wake'']]
I.2 opens with an account of "Harold or Humphrey" Chimpden receiving the [[agnomen|nickname]] "Earwicker" from the Sailor King, who encounters him attempting to catch [[earwig]]s with an inverted flowerpot on a stick while manning a [[tollgate]] through which the King is passing. This name helps Chimpden, now known by his initials HCE, to rise to prominence in Dublin society as "Here Comes Everybody". He is then brought low by a rumour that begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the [[Phoenix Park]], although details of HCE's transgression change with each retelling of events.

Chapters I.2 through I.4 follow the progress of this rumour, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe" in Phoenix Park. The cad greets HCE in Gaelic and asks the time, but HCE misunderstands the question as an accusation, and incriminates himself by denying rumours the cad has not yet heard. These rumours quickly spread across Dublin, gathering momentum until they are turned into a song penned by the character Hosty called "[[The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly]]". As a result, HCE goes into hiding, where he is besieged at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American looking for a drink after hours.<ref>Benstock 1965, p.xvi. {{cite web | url= https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AJoyceColl | title = Benstock, Bernard / Joyce-again's wake: an analysis of Finnegans wake, p. xvi | last= Benstock | first= Bernard | publisher= The James Joyce Scholars' Collection}}</ref> HCE remains silent – not responding to the accusations or verbal abuse – dreams, is buried in a coffin at the bottom of [[Lough Neagh]],<ref>Burgess, Anthony, ''A Shorter Finnegans Wake'', p.17</ref> and is finally brought to trial, under the name Festy King. He is eventually freed, and goes once more into hiding. An important piece of evidence during the trial – a letter about HCE written by his wife ALP – is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail.

ALP's letter becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in I.5. This letter was dictated by ALP to her son Shem, a writer, and entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a [[midden heap]] where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy. Chapter I.6 digresses from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers. In the eleventh question or riddle, Shaun is asked about his relation to his brother Shem, and as part of his response, tells the parable of the Mookse and the Gripes.<ref>Tindall, W. Y., ''A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=dO2IrqURy8cC&pg=PT117&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 117–122].</ref>{{rp|117–122}}

In the final two chapters of Part I, we learn more about the letter's writer Shem the Penman (I.7) and its original author, his mother ALP (I.8). The Shem chapter consists of "Shaun's character assassination of his brother Shem", describing the hermetic artist as a forger and a "sham", before "Shem is protected by his mother [ALP], who appears at the end to come and defend her son."<ref>Fordham, F., ''Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), [https://books.google.com/books?id=xiV0Vw1GeKsC&lpg=PA12&hl=cs&pg=PP33&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 33].</ref> The following chapter concerning Shem's mother, known as "Anna Livia Plurabelle", is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, and is widely considered the book's most celebrated passage.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=NBsOAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA23 ''A Starchamber Quiry: A James Joyce Centennial Volume, 1882–1982''], p 23, Edmund L. Epstein, Routledge, 1982, {{ISBN|0-416-31560-7}}</ref> The chapter was described by Joyce in 1924 as "a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone."<ref>{{cite web | url= http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/main/essays.php?essay=killeen | last= Killeen | first= Terence | title= Life, Death and the Washerwomen | publisher= Hypermedia Joyce Studies}}</ref> These two washerwomen gossip about ALP's response to the allegations laid against her husband HCE, as they wash clothes in the [[River Liffey]]. ALP is said to have written a letter declaring herself tired of her mate. Their gossip then digresses to her youthful affairs and sexual encounters, before returning to the publication of HCE's guilt in the morning newspaper, and his wife's revenge on his enemies: borrowing a "mailsack" from her son Shaun the Post, she delivers presents to her 111 children. At the chapter's close, the washerwomen try to pick up the thread of the story, but their conversation is increasingly difficult as they are on opposite sides of the widening Liffey, and it is getting dark. Finally, as they turn into a tree and a stone, they ask to be told a Tale of Shem or Shaun.<ref>cf Patrick A. McCarthy's chapter summary in Crispi, Slote 2007, pp. 165–6</ref>

=== Part II ===
While Part I of ''Finnegans Wake'' deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Part II shifts that focus to their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy.

II.1 opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and attributes of the book's main characters. The chapter then concerns a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is challenged three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen.<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-224.htm p.224, lines 22,26] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209105615/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-224.htm |date=9 December 2008 }}. According to Joyce, the piece was based on a children's game called "Angels and Devils" or "Colours," in which one child ("the devil", here played by Shem, or Nick) is supposed to guess a colour that has been chosen by the others ("the angels", here played by the girls). Joyce, ''Letters'', I, p.295</ref> Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace, and Shaun wins the affection of the girls. Finally, HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside.<ref>Tindall 1969, pp. 153–170</ref>

Chapter II.2 follows Shem, Shaun and Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter.<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-282.htm pp. 282, line 5 – p.304, line 4] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090121183147/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-282.htm |date=21 January 2009 }}</ref><ref>Finnegans Wake II.2§8 (282.05–304.04), the main narrative of which is known critically as "The Triangle" and which Joyce referred to in letters as "Night Lessons", first appeared as "The Triangle" in transition 11 in February 1928 and then again under the newer title "The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump" in ''Tales Told of Shem and Shaun'', and finally as a book called "Storiella as She is Syung" in 1937 (Paris: Black Sun Press, June 1929). See JJA 52 and 53.</ref> The chapter depicts "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do [[Euclid]] Bk I, 1", structured as "a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with [[marginalia]] by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't)".<ref>Joyce, ''Letters I'', p. 242</ref><ref>Joyce, ''Letters I'', p405–6</ref> Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the [[Pythagorean theorem#Euclid's proof|Euclid diagram]], the latter realises that he has drawn a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles [..and..] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men."<ref>Benstock 1965, pp. xx–xxi</ref> The chapter ends with the children's "nightletter" to HCE and ALP, in which they are "apparently united in a desire to overcome their parents."<ref>Fordham, Finn ''Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=cXqhNJgDbGYC&pg=PA84 p. 242]</ref>

{{quote box|width=23em|'''Section 1:''' a radio broadcast of the tale of Pukkelsen (a hunchbacked Norwegian Captain), Kersse (a tailor) and McCann (a ship's husband) in which the story is told ''inter alia'' of how HCE met and married ALP.

'''Sections 2–3:''' an interruption in which Kate (the cleaning woman) tells HCE that he is wanted upstairs, the door is closed and the tale of Buckley is introduced.

'''Sections 4–5:''' the tale, recounted by Butt and Taff (Shem and Shaun) and beamed over the television, of how Buckley shot the Russian General (HCE)|source= –Danis Rose's overview of the extremely complex chapter 2.3, which he believes takes place in the bar of Earwicker's hotel<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.122</ref>}}
II.3 moves to HCE working in the pub below the studying children. As HCE serves his customers, two narratives are broadcast via the bar's radio and television sets, namely "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter",<ref>Joyce called the Norwegian Captain's story a "wordspiderweb" and referred to it as "perhaps the most complacently absurd thing that I ever did until now{{nbsp}}... It is the story of a Captain{{nbsp}}... and a Dublin tailor which my god-father told me forty years ago, trying to explain the arrival of my Viking in Dublin, his marriage, and a lot of things I don't care to mention here." See, Joyce, ''Letters'', III, p. 422</ref><ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', pp.122–3</ref> and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General". The first portrays HCE as a Norwegian Captain succumbing to domestication through his marriage to the Tailor's Daughter. The latter, told by Shem and Shaun ciphers Butt and Taff, casts HCE as a Russian general who is shot by Buckley, an Irish soldier in the [[British Army]] during the [[Crimean War]].<ref>Tindall 1969, p.187</ref> Earwicker has been absent throughout the latter tale, having been summoned upstairs by ALP. He returns and is reviled by his customers, who see Buckley's shooting of the General as symbolic of Shem and Shaun's supplanting their father.<ref>Bishop, John; ''Introduction'' to Penguin's 1999 edition of ''Finnegans Wake'', pp. xxii–xxiii</ref> This condemnation of his character forces HCE to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls.<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.129</ref><ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-361.htm p. 361, line 36 – p.363, line 16] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330082319/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-361.htm |date=30 March 2010 }}</ref><ref>Burgess, ''A Shorter Finnegans Wake'', p.166</ref><ref>Tindall 1969, pp. 202–203</ref> Finally a policeman arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up,<ref>cf the section starting "Shatten up ship"; Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-376.htm p. 376, line 30 – p.371, line 5] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100402101701/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-376.htm |date=2 April 2010 }}</ref> and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken HCE, clearing up the bar and swallowing the dregs of the glasses left behind, morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out.<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p. 131</ref><ref>Tindall 1969, p.205</ref>

II.4, portraying the drunken and sleeping Earwicker's dream, chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on [[Tristan and Iseult]]'s journey.<ref>The chapter is a composite of two shorter pieces called "Mamalujo" and "Tristan and Isolde", which Joyce had written as early as 1923. See Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.131</ref> The short chapter portrays "an old man like [[King Mark]] being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him",<ref>Bishop, ''Introduction'', p. xxiii</ref> while the four old men observe Tristan and Isolde, and offer four intertwining commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves".<ref>Tindall 1969, p.210</ref>

=== Part III ===
Part III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, in his role as postman, having to deliver ALP's letter, which was referred to in Part I but never seen.<ref>Joyce referred to Part III's four chapters as "The Four Watches of Shaun", and characterised them as "a description of a postman travelling backwards in the night through the events already narrated. It is narrated in the form of a ''via crucis'' of 14 stations but in reality, is only a barrel rolling down the river Liffey." Joyce, ''Letters'', vol. I, p. 214.</ref><ref>[https://jjda.ie/f/ff/fbiog/fwlett.htm "Letter to Harriet Weaver"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220806171851/https://jjda.ie/main/JJDA/f/FF/fbiog/fwlett.htm |date=6 August 2022 }} (24 May 1924), James Joyce Digital Archive.</ref>

III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep",<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-203.htm p. 403, line 17] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100405004602/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-203.htm |date=5 April 2010 }}</ref> he had heard and seen an apparition of Shaun the Post.<ref>"who was after having a great time{{nbsp}}... in a porterhouse." Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-407.htm p.407, lines 27–28] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211204145/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-407.htm |date=11 December 2008 }}</ref> As a result, Shaun re-awakens and, floating down the Liffey in a barrel, is posed fourteen questions concerning the significance and content of the letter he is carrying. Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him."<ref>Wim Van Mierlo, in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 347</ref> Shaun's answers focus on his own boastful personality and his admonishment of the letter's author – his artist brother Shem. The answer to the eighth question contains the story of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, another framing of the Shaun-Shem relationship.<ref>Tindall, ''A Reader's Guide to Finnegans Wake'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=dO2IrqURy8cC&pg=PT229&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 229–231].</ref>{{rp|229–231}} After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view.<ref>cf "and, lusosing his harmonical balance{{nbsp}}[...] over he careened{{nbsp}}[...] by the mightyfine weight of his barrel{{nbsp}}[... and] rolled buoyantly backwards{{nbsp}}[...] out of farther earshot{{nbsp}}[...] down in the valley before{{nbsp}}[...] he spoorlessly disappealed and vanesshed{{nbsp}}[...] from circular circulatio." Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-426.htm p.426, line 28 – p. 427, line 8] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211204329/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-426.htm |date=11 December 2008 }}</ref>

In III.2 Shaun re-appears as "Jaunty Jaun" and delivers a lengthy and sexually suggestive sermon to his sister Issy, and her twenty-eight schoolmates from St. Brigid's School. Throughout this book Shaun is continually regressing, changing from an old man to an overgrown baby lying on his back, and eventually, in III.3, into a vessel through which the voice of HCE speaks again by means of a spiritual [[Mediumship|medium]]. This leads to HCE's defence of his life in the passage "Haveth Childers Everywhere". Part III ends in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Porter as they attempt to copulate while their children, Jerry, Kevin and Isobel Porter, are sleeping upstairs and the dawn is rising outside (III.4). Jerry awakes from a nightmare of a scary father figure, and Mrs. Porter interrupts the coitus to go comfort him with the words "You were dreamend, dear. The pawdrag? The fawthrig? Shoe! Hear are no phanthares in the room at all, avikkeen. No bad bold faathern, dear one."<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-565.htm p.565] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211045647/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-565.htm |date=11 December 2008 }}</ref> She returns to bed, and the rooster crows at the conclusion of their coitus at the Part's culmination.<ref>Crispi, Slote 2007, p.413</ref>

=== Part IV ===
{{quote box|width=23em|'''1''': The waking and resurrection of [HCE]; '''2''': the sunrise; '''3''': the conflict of night and day; '''4''': the attempt to ascertain the correct time; '''5''': the terminal point of the regressive time and the [Shaun] figure of Part III; '''6''': the victory of day over night; '''7''': the letter and monologue of [ALP]|source= –Roland McHugh's summary of the events of Part IV<ref>McHugh, ''The Sigla of ''Finnegans Wake''' p. 106'''</ref>}}
Part IV consists of only one chapter, which, like the book's opening chapter, is mostly composed of a series of seemingly unrelated [[Vignette (literature)|vignettes]]. After an opening call for dawn to break,<ref>"Calling all downs to dayne" and "Calling all daynes to dawn"; Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-593 .htm p. 593, lines 2 and 11], respectively {{dead link|date=June 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}</ref> the remainder of the chapter consists of the vignettes "Saint Kevin", "Berkely and Patrick" and "The Revered Letter".<ref>Joyce gave some hint of the intention behind the three separate episodes in conversation with [[Frank Budgen]]: "In Part IV there is in fact a [[triptych]] – though the central window is scarcely illuminated. Namely the supposed windows of the village church gradually lit up by the dawn, the windows, i.e., representing on one side the meeting of [[Saint Patrick|St Patrick]] (Japanese) & the (Chinese) Archdruid Bulkely (this by the way is all about colour) & the legend of the progressive isolation of [[Kevin of Glendalough|St Kevin]], the third being [[Lorcán Ua Tuathail|St Lawrence O’Toole]], patron saint of Dublin; buried in Eu in Normandy." quoted in McHugh, ''Annotations to Finnegans Wake: Third Edition'', p.613</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/short17.html#five|title=Finnegans Wake chapter 17 review|access-date=19 November 2007|publisher=Robot Wisdom|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071031033827/http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/short17.html#five|archive-date=31 October 2007|url-status=usurped}}</ref> ALP is given the final word, as the book closes on a version of her Letter<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-615.htm pp. 615–619] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209060558/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-615.htm |date=9 December 2008 }}; critics disagree on whether this is the definitive version of The Letter which has been discussed throughout, or merely another variation of it</ref> and her final long monologue, in which she tries to wake her sleeping husband, declaring "Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!",<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-619.htm p. 619] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209060618/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-619.htm |date=9 December 2008 }}</ref> and remembers a walk they once took, and hopes for its re-occurrence. At the close of her monologue, ALP – as the river Liffey – disappears at dawn into the ocean. The book's last words are a fragment, but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book: <blockquote>A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.</blockquote>