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Chapter 11 / SIRENS -Picking chips off rocky thumbnail: Hello friends I am sorry that I have had little time to read Ulysses in the last two weeks. Yesterday being Ascension was a holiday, it was a gloriously warm day too, so I could indulge myself sitting in the garden and reading. Read again the chapter 'Wandering Rocks'. It was a great way to spend a sunny afternoon. Only one question came to my mind though, Dublin is surely a large city. How come these characters know one another - everyone, almost everyone, knows Mr. Bloom, for example.??!! Today I continued to the next chapter, Sirens. Oh, my GOD was my first reaction. It reads funny but till I went back to Gifford I thought that it was a scene in a brothel. But it is supposed to be in a bar at a hotel. The very third line of the chapter is: Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Gifford explains this as meaning, 'Simon Dedalus enters the bar.' Can anybody explain to me how on earth can one find out that Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips means that Simon Dedalus enters the bar?? Because if one does not understand this, the five pages or so I have read in the chapter does not make much sense. Chandra-hoping-that-the-list-is-still-alive.
If you look at the map, you'll see that with the exception of Stephen's early morning activities, the funeral cortege and the viceregal cavalcade, everybody walks in Dublin - a very 'walkable' city I am told - and the range of movement is not great with a few straggling exceptions (such as Tom Kernan out by the brewery and Thersites out near Stonybatter Road.) Bloom must have taken the trolley from the Dignam home in Irish Town to Barney Kiernan's pub although we are not told about it and the expense of the fare does not appear in his accounting of money spent and gained (Chapter 17.) All the members of the book come from the same social class and are/were (since some of them like Simon are unemployed) engaged in a round of activities that would bring them into constant social contact. Bloom alone has held a number of tiresome jobs and Molly is a noted singer. Both of these would raise the Blooms above the undistinguished stream of anonymous folk, would give them considerable visibilty in the Dublin community. And about picking chips off rocky thumbnail: Joyce picks up this phrase from line 3 at lines 192-3: Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky fingernails. Chips." All of the motifs are repeated at least once in this chapter and some of them pick up references from elsewhere in the book as well. Good to hear from you again. Bob Williams HOME! |