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Chapter 6 - The Funeral / The Wake: Mike Just read that article on the Bloom's soap. My goodness! Really enjoyed that piece of writing. Thanks for the tip. But did any one feel like I did the 'disrespect' shown here towards death? Chandra I think this is part of Joyce's way of presenting his Dublin gang, by drawing the contrast between the solemn occasion and their frivolity. Even Cunningham's reproof that this is after all a solemn occasion is more concerned with appearances than anything else and someone rejoins - Power probably - that Paddy never begrudged anyone a laugh. Paddy is an acquiantance rather than a friend and we are in a society where the men are free to pay their last respects on the level of male cameraderie and in a festive manner. The Irish wake in less exalted circles was not only a party - at which games were played to pass the time - but sometimes an excuse for a brawl. The song Finnegan's Wake is worth a glance. Biddy O'Brien makes so great a display of grief that a companion is annoyed and, in the words of the song: Then Biddy O'Connor took up the job, Biddy, says she, you're wrong I'm sure, But Biddy gave her a belt in the gob, And left her sprawling on the floor: O, then the war did soon enrage; 'Twas woman to woman and man to man, Shillelagh law did all engage, And a row and a ruction soon began. This song (of uncertain provenance and probably Irish-American rather than Irish) helps to explain why many of the clergy opposed wakes. Even outsider Bloom is caught up in the party mood when he prays that deliciously funny but appropriate prayer: "Hoping you're well and not in hell." It is, I think, more the custom of the country that we are looking at here rather than a heartfelt expression of mourning. Part of the playfullness of the "mourners" arises greatly from the fact that Paddy was indistinguishable from a thousand Dublin hard-drinking wastrels. Bob What can I add to what you wrote, Bob? Precisely little! This is what is nice in this book, nothing one knows and feels works. And then one reads this thing about the book being about one day in the life of a real man. What is real, what is not?? Chandra Dear Bob, Mike, Bod and Lurkers I have been thinking about Bob's post about Irish wake. To clear up my thoughts, I just now read in www.britannica.com a short paragraph over 'wake'. I knew a little about it. According to britannica, wake is more like a drinking orgy. This is what does not happen in Hades. There is hardly any merry making involved. It is more kind of disinterestedness. Not even disrespect but disinterest in the dead Dignam which bothered (s) me. But let us leave it at that. Before going on to Aeolus, I have a question for Mike and others. Mike, that article you referred us to says that the soap was a kind of talisman for Bloom. Why the soap? Any ideas? One of you mentioned, I think that Bloom is an outsider. It is very obvious at the end of the Hades chapter. When Cunningham and Menton are walking together, and Bloom appears, saying, 'Excuse me, sir, ...Your hat is a little crushed...' And then, 'Mr. Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few paces so as not to overhear...' chapfallen= crestfallen? = a chap who is an outsider?? Chandra There is reference to Dunphy's Corner in Hades. The corner took its name from the pub that stood there and it was well placed for the mourners after the burial at Glasnevin. There is more about it in Stephen Hero, the fragment from a long work that became A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The men stop there after a funeral and drink. Chapfallen (or chopfallen) is descriptive of chagrin that one experiences at any untoward event. It is not of itself a signifier of customary alienation. Chap or chop refers to the jaw or the cheek. Bob
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