The last word in the book is 'the', which leads, by Joyce's ever recurrent cycles, to the opening word in the book, the eternal 'riverrun.'
Although the events are set in the Dublin suburb of Chapelizod, the place is an analogue for everywhere else. Wake's structure follows the three stages of history as laid out by Vico: the Divine, the Heroic and Human, followed period of flux, after which the cycle begins all over again: the last sentence in the work runs into the first. The title of the book is a compound of Finn MaCool, the Irish folk-hero who is supposed to return to life at some future date to become the savior of Ireland, and Tim Finnegan, the hero of music-hall ballad, who sprang to life in the middle of his own wake.
NOTE: According to tradition, Homer was blind. From 1917 to 1930 Joyce endured several eye operations, being totally blind for short intervals. - Joyce's daughter suffered from schizophrenia and she was among Carl Jung's patients in the 1930s. - Joyce's WW I years with Lenin and Tzara provide the basis for Tom Stoppard's play Travesties (1974).
For further reading: James Joyce by W.Y. Tindall (1950); Joyce: The Man, the Reputation, the Work by M. Maglaner and R.M. Kain (1956); Dublin's Joyce by Hugh Kenner (1956); My Brtother's Keeper by S. Joyce (1958); James Joyce by Richard Ellmann (1959); A Readers' Guide to Joyce (1959); The Art of James Joyce by A.W. Litz (1961); Surface and Symbol: The Consistency of James Joyce's Ulysses by R.M. Adams (1962); J. Joyce-again's Finnegans Wake by B. Benstock (1965); James Joyce's 'Ulysses': Critical Essays, ed. by Clive Hart and David Hayman (1974); A Conceptual Guide to 'Finnegans Wake' by Michael H. Begnal and Fritz Senn (1974); James Joyce: the Citizen and the Artist by C. Peake (1977); James Joyce by Patrick Parrinder (1984); Joyce's Anatomy of Culture by Cheryl Herr (1986); Joyce's Book of the Dark: 'Finnegans Wake by John Bishop (1986); Reauthorizing Joyce by Vicki Mahaffey (1988); 'Ulysses' Annotated by Don Gifford (1988); An Annotated Critical Bibliography of James Joyce, ed. by Thomas F. Staley (1989); The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, ed by Derek Attridge (1990); Joyce's Web by Margot Norris (1992); James Joyce's 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' by David Seed (1992); Critical Essays on James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake ed. by Patrick A. McCarthy (1992); James Joyce and the Language of History: Dedalus's Nightmare by Robert E. Spoo (1994), Gender in Joyce, ed. by Jolanta W. Wawrzycka (1997) ; A Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses, ed.