Besides Walden, What I Lived For draws on James Joyce's Ulysses (1922) as indicated by a quotation from this novel that Oates chooses as a headnote: "He rests.

He has traveled." Corky's weekend, episodic journey recalls the day-long journey that Joyce sets in Dublin. Corky combines Joyce's Telemachus/Stephen Dedalus and Odysseus/Leopold Bloom as he wanders aimlessly in a restless spiritual malaise, ineffectual in most of his actions.

Unlike Joyce, Oates confines her streamof-consciousness technique to Corky, shaping her novel only around the episodes he participates in. But like Joyce, she carefully paces the novel and each of its episodes, underscoring the crescendo of Corky's behavior and his gradual loss of energy as he begins to see the corruption that has surrounded him.