The Calypso episdoe of Ulysses seems to be the most easily identifiable in its references to The Odyssey.
Meeting Mr. Leopold Bloom after being submerged inside Stephen's head during the Proteus episode, creates a stark contrast that serves to show the different worlds that different people percieve. This manages to add meaning to the presvious sections discussion of the differnent ways of viewing things, either sequentially or stationary (rooted in images) while asserting Bloom's character in all its physical and tangible glory. While Bloom seems base in comparison to Stephen's lofty ideals for himself, we see Bloom's dimensions in his religious roots and in; "a soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now." (67)
Bloom appears to turn away from the truth of his wife's infidelities but we see him tortured by it, we see him projecting his thoughts of sexual tension onto the life of his maturing daughter. Despite the obvious focus that Leopold has on bodily functions and the female bodies around him, the discussion about metempsychosis he has with his wife shows a space for the developing theme of the separation between the abstract and the physical world. Joyce's love for puns and word play becomes a bit heavy handed. Such as, "Bone them young so they metempsychosis. The we live after death. That a man's soul after he dies." (64) Leopold sees the act of reincarnation as happening within life, within growing older. He sees this in is daughter but not in his wife. He seems to feel that his wife was always the way she is now.
That Bloom is Jewish comes into his head repeatedly. The same way that Stephen is plagued by the shadow of catholicism that he feels falls over all of Ireland, Bloom's Jewish descent is a constant thought and a constant factor in the way the he views the world around him. While Stephen constantly referrences the Bible and places in the Bible, Bloom referrences Palestine at least four times. I would love to see Mr. Deasy and Leopold Bloom interact.
1 comment:
Your posts are straightforward and lucid - they do a good job, each time, of summarizing the basic theme or concern of the chapter. You can now start drawing lines between chapters and digging for a paper theme. You mention bloom's cognitive battle over his knowledge of his wife's infidelity and his awareness of his Jewishness, a parallel to Stephen's guilt and struggle with language in Proteus. Maybe the single most consistent concern through all these chapters is death, but it is death on a social sense as well as physical death. The sacraments are not observed, the sacredness has gone out of life, meaning itself is shaky, identity is ambiguous. And we're about to descend into Hades with the funeral of the unlamented Paddy Dignam, whose surname is ironic, since he drank himself to death as Stephen (Bloom fears in chapter 8) is likely to do. What makes a hero? Virtually everything in these chapters is symbolic, so you can start drawing connections and pick an angle of attack.
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