JOYCE		LUCK CLUB
DUBLINERS	ULYSSES	THE PORTRAIT

Chapter 16 / EUMAEUS - The laughs ... finally!: What a great chapter! After the dizzy heights to which Circe took me, it is just an incredible experience to read the next chapter, Eumaeus. I am reading it for the third time, and must admit that I never laughed so much while reading Ulysses as I do reading this chapter. In my last post, I had asked what is Stephen to Bloom, and Bob had sent a wonderful answer. Now, let me reverse the question, what is Bloom to Stephen? Why does he go out with Bloom? They are so different in all the ways one can think of. And why is Bloom still out at 1 pm, not surely because he expects Boylan at home. I am also puzzled by the Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer who happened to be returning when Bloom and Stephen set out in search of some drinkable in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. This sandstrewer was also in Circe of course. When I read it the first time, I had kind of assumed that there was sandstrewer out on the roads like a saltstrewer will soon be out on the roads here. But the month was June. So what is the sandstrewer doing here? What is the role of THE sailor? Similar to that the citizen in an earlier chapter, I feel. Would be nice to hear from a couple of you guys. Chandra p.s: At this rate I am sure of finishing Ulysses by Christmas!! Yes, Eumaeus has a lot of laugh-aloud material in it. I'm not sure but I think Bloom tagged along for something better to do. Dixon dragged him into the party at the maternity hospital. He had two good reasons not to go home. The first one was his fear of finding Boylan in bed with Molly (and he would have for as we will read in Penelope she and Boylan were still in bed when the thunder crash --- the one that so frightened Stephen --- occurred) and the second fear was that Molly would have decamped with Boylan. He had every reason not to go home under the circumstances. Bloom simply plays to each event as it happens and it is interesting to see how his instincts are always generous and concerned. For all his weird ways, he is really a very decent person. I think that this gives us some insight into what he was to Stephen. Despite Stephen's surly and unbending manner, Bloom finally wears him down and they enjoy a kind of comradeship that neither of them have experienced during the day just over and which Bloom has not experienced for years. This chapter relates to the Nostos or homecoming part of the Odyssey. In that section the main element is deceit. Odysseus lies to Athena before she reveals herself and when she does she intimates that she too is a deceiver. Odysseus then lies to Eumaeus, he would also lie to Eurycleia but she has to be sworn to secrecy when she discovers the secret of his identity. Joyce's sailor is an element in this stew of falsehood and falseseeming. Is he even a sailor? Bloom thinks not and suspects that he may be a released convict. Few of the evidences that Murphy advances seem beyond question. He is appropriately --- perhaps --- the returned mariner and, if not, a good match for the keeper of the shelter who is probably not Skin-the-Goat. The truth of the matter was that the watchman was probably Skin-the-Goat, not Gumley. Did Joyce know this? We will never know. If he did, he was strewing yet one more red-herring across our path. I can remember streetcars and dimly I remember that, although the street was paved (with bricks), the bed in which the streetcar tracks were laid was sand and this had to be replenished from time to time. I may be wrong about this. This was a long time ago. Bob Williams Why would a fornicating couple stay in the husband's bed together until such a late hour? Did they want to be caught? Brian It would be my guess that they can't have cared very much. They both felt comfortable enough about the situation to fall asleep. It was the clap of thunder --- around 9? --- that woke up Molly. I really don't know what we are to make of this. As you point out, Brian, it surely seems strange. It bridges into some interesting speculations. Paul Schwaber (The Cast of Characters) draws Bloom's psychological profile as one afraid of his anger, a product of the personality fit between Bloom and his mother. To avoid her distress, Schwaber writes, Bloom must have learned to contain his anger. It is certainly a convincing picture of Bloom who during the day goes into elaborate compensatory actions every time that he sees Boylan. It is a little more difficult to speak of this as a product of Bloom's relationship with his mother. If Stephen has more mother --- or at least more mother-problems --- than he can handle, Bloom seems scarcely to have a mother at all. This later shortage may in turn be the product of the fact that both Stephen and Bloom resemble Joyce himself at two different points in his life. One can go further and wonder how deeply affected Joyce was by the death of Mary Jane Joyce. His attitude towards her in Gorman's biography, a work controlled by Joyce, is cold and dismissive. This doesn't agree with A Portrait or Stephen Hero. And, although these may be held at arm's length because both are after all fiction, the evidence of the letters points in a different direction than the biography. I can see this as a problem but I have no idea how to solve it. (By the way, I recommend Schwaber's book very much.) Bob Williams Bob Thanks for illuminating comments on who Bloom is (could be). He is really a very decent character. And I guess if one does not know (as you said) that Molly is still in bed with Boylan, one has no way of understanding Bloom's reluctance to return home. In this chapter, Eumaeus, he is a very likeable person. Joyce allows here, for the first time, a peek into his character. He admires Stephen for his having a degree (i.e., Bloom is not much educated), he is concerned about Stephen's future (i.e., he is a lonely father), he still loves Molly (when he tries to excuse her temperament as being a result of her being spanish), he is quite simple (takes Stephen too seriously, think of the incidence when Stephen refers to the King of Spain's daughter), he is a decent fellow (resents violence or intolerance in any shape or form) .... The chapter also shows Joyce's preoccupation with Parnell. Does he not pop him up anywhere and everywhere? It also shows his concern for what was happening in Europe in those times. He quite clearly shows that his sympathy lies with the jews (or any outsiders) when he says that 'It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak.' Such reference to jews was made once earlier when he refers to himself as a wandering jew (forget which chapter). I also read the longest sentence so far in the book. 204 words. I cannot, at this stage, connect to what Paul Schwaber has to say about Bloom. That reference is for the future! Have I missed anything else important in this chapter? Chandra It certainly seems that you have a good grasp on this chapter. The possible other question that you raise --- about Parnell --- could involve a long involved answer. To Joyce, as to other radical Irish like Joyce's father, Parnell offered the best chance for Irish freedom and he suffered betrayal by, among others, the Catholic clergy. The facts were slightly different from this but it's how Joyce understood it that matters. James Fairhall's James Joyce and the Question of History presents a more balanced picture of the transactions of Parnell's fall. The assumption that Parnell, had he not fallen, would have led the Irish to freedom is counterfactual history but the assumption is so often presented as incontrovertibable fact that it is desirable to stress the fact that it is not a fact. Joyce himself in his later years arrived at a more balanced opinion of Parnell but as a fallen hero he was very valuable to Joyce in Finnegans Wake. Bob Williams "It certainly seems that you have a good grasp on this chapter." Finally , eh! :-) Chandra That was a poor way to put it and I must hide behind the :-) emoticon in my justification. It's a troublesome book and by definition gives everybody trouble. Bob  Top! HOME!