A final example of how an awareness of levels can increase comprehension:

Anything may have meaning on any level or combination of levels.  Let's take the flag flying on top of a flagpole.  On the five levels, this is what it might mean to 5 separate observers:

• Ironic:       that bit of cloth, with a particular pattern on it, so what?
• Realistic    the flag America uses; Ireland uses another; every country has one.
• Heroic:     the flag Americans cheer, that flies the highest.  US at our practical best!
• Romantic: my flag! it inspires me, holds my personal hopes, my dreams!
• Mythic:     our American hopes and dreams, not just mine or yours, but everyone's.

When Congress thinks of passing a law prohibiting anyone destroying or defacing the American flag,  which flag are they talking about?  Here are four voices trying to discuss the matter:

--It's just a piece of cloth!  [ironic level argument].

--It's more than that. When you burn a flag you insult the country it stands for, the people who cherish it! [heroic level reply].

--Ah, come on! If I burn a flag, I'm hardly burning down Congress or the country! [Realistic retort]

--No, you are attacking the beliefs and founding principles and hopes and dreams of a whole nation, indivisible under God! [Mythic assertion]

Arguments can be waged on different levels.

We do this frequently, especially in politics.

Sometimes we don't understand each other at all.

Reading Joyce affords ample opportunity to inquire about what level of meaning we are on--sometimes it changes from word to word. In Finegans Wake it changes within words, by the letter!

These 5 levels aren't sacrosanct--formulate your own set of levels, or just get the concept clear in your mind. But don't miss any innuendoes because you mistakenly think that, for example, a flag is really just a few strips of sewn cloth, or that when in Ulysses Joyce describes Buck Mulligan as "stately," he just means he has good posture.