A small three-legged wooden stool with a tilted seat against a coral-pink background.

Original artwork, not a still

Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader ‧ 1965

Anthony Burgess

If you reject family – which a mother holds together – as well as the ties of Church and State, is there anything left for you?

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

A pointed question about what remains once you cast off family, church and state. The speaker treats a mother as the glue of family, and suggests that rejecting all three of these bonds may leave a person with very little to stand on.

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