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 Corre3~ondences ,6o 
Finnegans Wake as to its characters. Joyce's language units may make little
sense in isolation, or even be misleading, but when all the other bits are
taken into consideration and projected on to the resolving screen of the
interpreting mind, their true significance is revealed. Like a national language,
that of Finnegans Wake—a recognisable and consistent whole, varied
by its own dialects, slang, and special usages—was meant to be self-explanatory
on its own ground. 
The television-set is a sort of latter-day Platonic Cave. Mr. 
J. S. Atherton has shown how Joyce conceived of Finnegans Wake as a cosmic
pantomime,' but the shadow-show—whether as cinema entertainment, Browne's
universal adumbration (537.o6),2 or the shadows in Plato's Cave—seems
to be no less important a frame of reference. All the characters are ' film
folk', and all are isolated from the rest (221.21, 264.19, 298.15, 398.25,
565.14) None can truly ' idendifine the individuone' because all are in the
' Cave of Kids' with respect to the others. Fusion of these lonely shades
in momentary union is the only means whereby the spiritual focus may be shifted
to something greater. The archetypal example of this Platonic application
of cross-correspondences is once again that great passionate moment in 111.4
(583.14), when the silhouette of fusing reality is flashed on the window-blind.
Here Joyce is at his most universal and yet at his most human. 
 1 J S. Atherton, ' Finnegans Wake: the gist of the pantomime', Accent, vol.
XV, Winter, ' 955, pp. 14—26. 
 2 See, for example, The Garden of Cyrus, C. Sayle (ed.), The Works of Sir
Thomas Browne, 3 vols., Edinburgh, 1912, vol. III, p. 199.