In her work, Architecture and Text: The (S)crypts of Joyce and Piranesi, Jennifer Bloomer notes that, "Shem and Shaun are unstable as individuals. They flow in and out of each other; they are always becoming. There is always difference, but it will not hold still." Just as the Wake itself traverses axes, never positioning itself as one thing or another, so too do Shem's and Shaun's identities diffuse so that one cannot be distinguished at any given moment without a reference to the other. The references to David and Jonathan both reinforce this binary and call its tautology into question. The Biblical friendship could be read as furthering the opposition between the brothers by marking their identities as separate and separable; however, it also brings them together by focusing attention not upon their differences but upon their friendship. The King James Version of the Bible tells that "the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." This close relationship was tested when Jonathan's father, King Saul, attempted to kill David on numerous occasions. In each case, Jonathan prevented the murder by either pleading with his father for David's life or by tricking his father long enough for David to escape. In the Joycean context, David and Jonathan's struggle against Saul exemplifies the two brother's desire to defeat the father figure, HCE, and take his place. In order for Shem and Shaun to defeat the father, however, they must resolve their differences and unite into a single unit, ShemShaun. In this case, although the reference to David and Jonathan suggests that a union is possible, the phrase, "Inconvenient, David," suggests that Shaun, in the guise of David, is unwilling to make such a connection.