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Chapter 10 /Wandering Rocks -The Traps: It was another glorious day, and I took off a few hours from the computer and sat in the garden reading the 10th chapter. My first reation to the chapter is that it is very much like a miniature painting (Indian). All these different scenarios presented are so minutely detailed, so interconnected that it is great fun to read. I also felt that it is an easy chapter to read. Particularly after reading the previous chapter. And I went back to your post, Bob, where you mention that there are many traps in the chapter. Oh, I have been blind to the traps! Could you give just one hint? Chandra Some of the traps are inside jokes designed for Joyce's friends. When Father Conmee asks after the woman's children at the very start of the chapter, the reader will probably not know that these were classmates of Joyce and no longer children. The children that Father Conmee then meets are also not children if one goes by the names. These names belonged to a pawnbroker, a bookie and a ne'er-do-well, all adults. Some of the traps are meaningless slights of hand. When the black suited figure pores over the books at the bookstall is it Bloom or Stephen? We learn later that it is Bloom but there are several teasing episodes of this sort. And Bloom the dentist is not Bloom the canvasser although Joyce doesn't give us much help in figuring this out. The interesting feature of the chapter is figuring out the relevance - some of them very indirect - of the interruptions to the episode that they interrupt. Some of these are simply lovely in their ingenuity. Best Bob one trap--father conmee resets his watch--this means he "resets" in into his pocket, not that he resets it to the correct time. the time is not five to three, but closer to four o'clock, the time when blazes is at bloom's house. buck also says that stephen will write something in ten years. 1904 + 10 years= 1914, about the time that Joyce started writing _U_ (but that's not a trap, just interesting) --Louis HOME! |