CHAPTER FIFTEEN, PART 1

Chapter 15, Part 1

Lecture Eighteen -- Circe of Nighttown, I

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope:

This lecture treats approximately the first half of “Circe,” which is

named for the enchantress who turns the men of Ulysses into

swine. With the aid of moly, a magical plant, Ulysses himself

resists her transformative power, makes her restore his men to their

human forms, and spends a pleasurable year with her before

moving on. The counterpart of Circe in this chapter is Bella

Cohen, mistress of a brothel in Dublin’s Nighttown. When

Stephen goes there with a friend named Lynch, Bloom follows

them in hopes of rescuing Stephen from further dissipation. But

when a whore named Zoe takes Bloom’s potato (his moly) as he

enters the brothel, he becomes helpless against all the fantasies that

swarm through his mind-including the hallucinated experience of

being turned into a pig. This first of two lectures on “Circe” will

consider how Bloom is by turns chastised, glorified, then

immolated before coming out of his trance--and before he meets

Bella herself

 Outline

I. This chapter is written as a play script of transformations,

hallucinations, and display. Following Stephen into the red light district

of Dublin (Nighttown) in hopes of reclaiming him, Bloom reenacts--

with a number of variations--Ulysses’s experience with Circe.

A. Written in dramatic form, the chapter has been staged as a play and
forms the centerpiece of Joseph Strick’s film of Ulysses.

B. Circe enchants the men of Ulysses, but he resists her
transformative power.

1. When Ulysses’s men come to visit Circe in her palace, she
gives them a potion that turns them into pigs.

2. Going after his men to free them, Ulysses gets a magic plant
called “moly” from Hermes, messenger of the gods.

3. With this, he resists Circe’s transformative power. Then he
makes her restore his men to their human form and enjoys her
bed for a year before sailing on with his men.

a. Thus, he parries the threat of being turned into a pig.

b. He takes command of Circe.

c. He liberates his men from her pigsty.

d. He ends up on the sea, heading home

C. Bloom follows Stephen and his friend to Bella Cohen’s brothel in
Nighttown but soon gives up his potato, making him liable to
various hallucinations and transformations until he recovers the
potato, regains his self-possession, stands up to Bella, and takes
charge of Stephen.

1. Unlike Ulysses, who gets his magic plant before he enters the palace of Circe, Bloom gives up his talismanic potato as he enters Bella’s brothel.

2. Thus, he suffers the transformation that Ulysses avoided; in
hallucination, he becomes a pig with Bella.

3. Eventually, he recovers his manhood and liberates Stephen
from the clutches of both Bella and the police.

4. As Ulysses left Circe with his men, Bloom leaves Nighttown
with Stephen. 

II. Pursuing Stephen in the paternal hope of rescuing him from 

dissipation, Bloom hallucinates an encounter with his father, Rudolph   

who reminds him of his own irresponsibility in youth-especially his

abandonment of Judaism.

A. Thinking that Bloom has come to Nighttown simply for his ownpleasure, Rudolph speaks to him as stem father to errant son,wasting his money with “drtmken goy.”

B. In the words ofthe play that Bloom has recalled in chapter 5,Rudolph accuses him of leaving “the god of his fathers.”

C. Ironically, Rudolph has no idea that Bloom is trying to saveStephen from degradation-notjoin him in it.

D. Once again, it’s really the guilt of his own apostasy that Rudolphnow seeks to load on the back of his son.

III. Wearing Turkish trousers as a sign of power, Molly insists that Bloom

call her “Mrs. Marion”-which recalls Boylan’s letter to her arranging

their nyst. Bloom is also menaced by the spectres of all the women he

has ogled, flirted with, or lusted after.

A. Bloom’s old flame Mrs. Breen, once Josie Powell, is shocked tofind Bloom “down here in the haunts of sin.”

B. Martha Clifford, the ditzy lady typist, charges him with breach ofpromise.

C. In a courtroom, Bloom is charged with various sexual offenses.

1. He’s accused of seeking an adulterous tryst with one Woman.

2. He’s accused of making masochistic demands on another.

3. He craves punishment partly to expiate his guilt.

IV. In giving up his talismanic potato as he enters Bella Cohen’s brothel,

Bloom gives us his manhood and makes himself vulnerable to a series

of transformations.

A. When a whore named Zoe takes the potato from Bloom’s pocket,she is not only taking his talisman but also symbolically castratinghim.

B. Bloom’s shriveled potato may also signify the history ofthe Irishpotato famine.

C. Without it, he is powerless against all the fantasies andhallucinations that now crowd in on him.

V. In the hallucinations that precede Bella’s appearance on the scene

Bloom is first glorified, then denounced and immolated.

A. When he speaks dismissively of smoking, Zoe urges him to makea “stump speech out of it.” ln hallucination, this speech finallyleads him to become king of his own utopia.

1. He runs for public office and becomes King Leopold the Firstking of Ireland.

2. He becomes Moses leading his people into “the newBloomusalem.”

3. He becomes another Christ and even god of the world, withpower to realize all his utopian fantasies.

B. But the fantasy explodes.

1. Bloom is attacked as “a disgrace to Christian men.”

2. He is immolated, then importuned as if he were a Christianmartyr

Vl. Bloom thus rides a roller coaster of fantasies, soaring up to heights of

glory and pitching down to disgrace and immolation.

Supplementary Reading:

Kenner, “Circe,” in Hart and Hayman, pp. 341-62

Shechner, Ulysses in Nighttown.

Questions to Consider:

1. Why is Bloom in his own fantasies both glorified and vilified?

2. Why does this chapter take the form of a play?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Chapter 14

Lecture Seventeen -- Oxen of the Sun

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This chapter is named for the Homeric episode in which Ulysses

and his men visit the island of Helios, the sun god, who keeps

sheep and oxen there. When Ulysses’s men slaughter the oxen in

the face of dire warnings not to do so, Helios curses them, and

they soon meet disaster at sea, with Ulysses alone surviving.

Taking the killing of the oxen as a crime against fecundity, Joyce

constructs a chapter about childbearing~specifically about

Bloom’s visit to the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, where

Mina Purefoy labors to beget her child. As he awaits news of the

birth, Bloom sits with a group of young men who are drinking and

talking about lechery and contraception-crimes against fecundity

By narrating this chapter in a succession of styles ranging from

Anglo-Saxon to late Victorian, Joyce maintains a running analogy

between the development of the English language and the

gestation of an infant

Outline

I. “Oxen of the Sun” is an extraordinarily demanding chapter that

reenacts Ulysses’s visit to the island of Helios by treating the killing of

the oxen as a crime against fecundity-with Stephen as the

“bullockbefriending bard” who defends the process of generation.

A. “Oxen of the Sun” challenges the reader more than any other
previous chapter. 

B. It is named for the episode in which Ulysses’s men slaughter the
oxen ofthe sun god Helios.

1. Ulysses has been warned that going to the island of Helios
would be disastrous. 

2. Pressed by his men to stop at Helios, he agrees on condition
that they slaughter no animals there. 

3. While Ulysses sleeps, his men slaughter the oxen. As a result
a storm strikes their ship when they leave, and Ulysses alone
survives

C. Joyce construes the killing of the oxen in this episode as a “crime
against fecundity”; in different Ways, Bloom and Stephen--the
“bullockbefriending bard”-each uphold the value of generating
human life against lechery and contraception and disrespect for
childbearing.

II. Bloom comes to the National Maternity Hospital to await the birth of

Mina Purefoy’s baby. While there, he sees Stephen carousing with

other young men and fears that will kill his creative energy, will spill

and waste the seed of his talent.

III. To reinforce the theme of childbearing in this chapter, Joyce constructs

a running analogy between the development of the English language

and the nine-month gestation of an infant.

A. Narrating the chapter in a succession of styles, Joyce moves from
Latinate English and Anglo-Saxon right up to the lucid elegance of
such writers as Newman and Pater in the late nineteenth century. 

B. Joyce alludes at various points to the development of the fetus 

C. Though it’s impossible to find every stage of pregnancy signified
by a shift in style, this “odyssey of style” shows us several things:

1. Joyce aims to rival every other writer in the history of English
prose in this novel. He not only mimics their styles but also
makes them serve his own grand design. 

2. Joyce once again multiplies the perspectives from which we
see Bloom. If Bloom recalls and revives the ancient Greek
hero Ulysses, he can also reincarnate such figures as the
wanderer of Anglo-Saxon poetry and the knight-errant of late
medieval romance.

IV. In their own way, Stephen and Bloom each defend procreation against

all the licentious young men who seek only to drink and copulate

without begetting anything or anyone.

A. When a conversation about hoof-and~mouth disease prompts one
young man to say, “Death to the cows,” Bloom can’t bear the
thought, and Stephen tells them all about the cure for the disease
described in Deasy’s letter. Thus, he and Bloom are
bullockbefrienders. 

B. As bullockbefrienders, Stephen and Bloom also befriend and
support procreation against the licentious young men.

1. When a young man named Costello speaks disrespectfully of
both Nurse Callan and childbearing, he’s rebuked by the
doctor and criticized by Bloom, who’s delighted to hear that
Mina has at last been delivered and vexed that anyone else
should take this news coldly. 

2. Stephen attacks contraception because he’s an apostle of
creation in all senses; for him, the begetting of life symbolizes
literary creation.

V. Just as a storm strikes Ulysses and his men after they slaughter the

oxen of the sun god, so a clap of thunder breaks into the young men’s

carousing-with a complex pair of meanings.

A. On one hand, the thunder signifies the rage of God against the
young men’s profligacy and disrespect for life. 

B. On the other hand, the rain sent by the storm fertilizes a barren
land and prefigures the birth of Mina’s baby.

VI. ln spite of their respect for childbearing and their advocacy of

procreation, neither Stephen nor Bloom is effectively creative.

A. When Bloom complains of Costello’s disrespect for childbearing,
the narrator reminds us that Bloom is hardly a dutiful progenitor
himself.

1. He has masturbated that very day-wasting his seed in the
sand. 

2. He has not had sex with Molly for more than ten years.

B. ln spite of his pretense to literary activity, Stephen has written
almost nothing-has “fathered” no literary offspring worthy of the
name.

1. He falsely claims that he earned his monthly pay “for a song
which he Writ.”

2. Lynch suggests that Stephen has no right to wear a laurel of
vine leaves until he has fathered “greatly more than a capful
of light odes.”

VII. Near the end of the chapter, Joyce takes comic aim at the concept of

fatherhood as a model for literary creation and implicitly shows that

motherhood is a far more powerful model for it.

A. Pretending to salute Theodore Purefoy, Mina’s husband, as the
hero of this chapter, the narrator actually reveals how little
Theodore’s mere spasm of excitement has contributed to the
making of her child. 

B. The whole organization of the chapter suggests that the long labors
of motherhood powerfully rival the spasm of fatherhood as a
model for literary creation.

VIII. At the end of the chapter, afier the long succession of styles, street

talk erupts like a screaming newborn baby, and Joyce’s novel bears

witness once again to the rebirth of living speech.

Supplementary Reading:

Kenner, Ulysses, pp. 107-117. 

Lawrence, Odyssey of Style. 

Osteen, “Cribs in the Countinghouse,” in Beja and Norris, pp. 237-49

Questions to Consider

1. Does the succession of styles simply impede our understanding of what
is happening in this chapter, or does it show us something new about
the characters, particularly Bloom?  

2. In a chapter ostensibly devoted to childbearing, Why is there no
description of the delivery room or report on the delivery itself?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Chapter 13
Lecture Sixteen -- Nausicaa at the Beach

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This chapter is named for the princess whom Ulysses meets when

he lands exhausted on the shore of Scheria; though she falls in love

with him and wants to marry him, and though he is graciously

entertained by her parents, he opts to head home. In this chapter,

Nausicaa appears as Gerty MacDowell, a sentimental young

woman who falls in love with Bloom when she sees him on the

beach at Sandymount Strand. In the first half of the chapter, she

constructs her own fantasy about their relationship, culminating in

an erotic exhibition as she leans back to watch fireworks. The

second half shows her from Bloom’s point of view. Having been

roused to orgasmic excitement by the sight of her underwear, he

finds that she is lame, and though he thinks about her from time to

time, his thoughts and feelings come home to Molly-and to his

own predicament as a wandering husband of unfixed identity.

Outline

I. Having borne a “long day” of trying experiences, including a visit to

the mourning household of Paddy Dignam, Bloom seeks relief in the

pleasure of looking at a lovely young girl sitting on the beach at

Sandymount Strand. Offering her beauty to the gaze of an exhausted

man, Gerty MacDowell is a modern version of Homer’s Nausicaa.

A. Ulysses meets Nausicaa on the shore of Scheria, which he reaches
after leaving the island of the nymph Calypso.

1. He’s exhausted from swimming for two days after a storm
wrecks his raft, and he falls asleep on the beach.
2. Nausicaa and her handmaidens discover him while they are
playing ball.
3. His appearance frightens them all, except for the princess.

B. Once Ulysses has been magically glamorized by the goddess
Athene, the princess sees him as godlike, wants to marry him, and
brings him to her parents.

1. They royally entertain him.
2. But when the king learns that he wants to get home, they
furnish his transportation to Ithaca.

II. The first half of the chapter shows us Bloom as seen by Gerty

MacDowell, who falls in love with the exotic Bloom, just as Nausicaa

falls in love with Homer’s voyager.

A. Gerty’s view of Bloom differs radically from that of the citizen
and narrator in chapter 12.

1. The citizen and the narrator see him only as an object of
contempt.
2. Gerty sees him as a dream come true-a “dreamhusband.”

a. She’s can see “a haunting sorrow” in his face. 

b. Her sentimental longing makes her idealize him, and the
comedy of the chapter springs from the gap between her
vision and Bloom’s reality.

B. Gerty is a narcissistic, jilted young woman aching for someone to
love, and she sees herself as a refuge for sinners--“a beacon to the
stormtossed heart of man.”

1. Sitting apart from her two girl friends and their little brothers,
she broods on her jilted condition and, seeing Bloom, quickly
casts the two of them as hero and heroine of a sentimental
romance. 

2. She also sees herself as a refuge of sinners (like the Virgin
Mary) who could save and comfort the handsome stranger,
however he might have “erred and sinned and wandered.”

III. Though she seems to offer love to a man who badly needs it, Gerty’s

“pure” beauty is the product of artifice, and her sentimental fantasies

about herself and Bloom wage war with life.

A. Long before she shows herself to be lame, her beauty proves
artificial: something thinly stretched over physical deficiencies that
she vainly tries to hide. 

B. She can’t bear to think of bodily functions, much less perform
them.

1. She wishes she could eat “something poetical like violets.” 

2. Her dreams of love make no place for anything sexual. 

3. She hates children, such as “the exasperating little brats of
twins.” 

4. She thinks spitefully of her friends, seeing Cissy Caffrey only
as her rival for the attention of Bloom.

lV. Though she casts herself as the Virgin Mary, a source of spiritual

refuge and object of devotion, she shows off her underwear to excite

Bloom’s desire for her.

A. She narcissistically imagines that Bloom is “worshipping at her
shrine.” Turning the sacred into the sexual, she makes herself an
object of erotic devotion.

B. While imagining herself as supremely “finebred” and Bloom “as a
man of inflexible honor to his fingertips,” she rouses both of them
to a pitch of sexual excitement signified by fireworks.

1. Leaning far back to watch the fireworks, she shows off her
underwear to Bloom. 

2. By the mere act of displaying herself, she sets off sexual
fireworks in both of them.

C. Gerty embodies a clutch of contradictions: virgin and temptress,
refuge of sinners and sexy exhibitionist, specimen of purity and
product of cosmetics, devotee of love and hater of nearly all things
living.

V. As a would-be prophet and Christ figure who now becomes a

masturbator, Bloom embodies contradictions of his own. ln its own

way, however, the masturbation is heroic.

A. Because his manhood has been questioned, Bloom demonstrates
his potency. 

B. Exercising a Ulyssean restraint by keeping his distance from the
young woman, he confines his excitement to the privacy of his
pockets. 

C. Given all the pains and problems of his day, he has merely sought
a harmless “relief” 

D. All things considered, Hugh Kenner argues that Bloom’s
masturbation is “heroic”

VI. After learning that Gerty is lame, Bloom’s sympathy for her condition

shows that unlike Gerty, Bloom understands love.

A. Finding her lame, he doesn’t simply dismiss her as damaged
goods. 

B. Given that she’s been jilted by her boyfriend and is left behind by
her girl friends, Bloom evidently sees her as a fellow outcast,
because he knows only too well what it is to be stigmatized. He
sees what they have in common. 

C. He sympathizes not only with her but with other women-with
Mrs. Purefoy in labor, with mothers struggling to raise children,
with his daughter, Milly, first straining against a corset.

VII. Nonetheless, Bloom struggles against depression and a sense of

futility. Though he hardly knows what to call himself at this point, he is

still homeward bound in his thoughts.

A. Having masturbated, he feels psychic as well as physical
detumescence. Knowing that his seed is wasted in the sand, he
reflects on the sterility of his life. 

B. Trying to leave a message for Gerty by writing with a stick, he
stops after writing “I AM A”~as if to show us that no category
can define him. 

C. In spite of the attractions of Gerty, his thoughts return to Molly,
the woman waiting for him at home. 

Supplementary Reading:

Levine, “Nausicaa,” in Beja and Norris, pp. 128-34. 

McGee, “When is a Man not a Man?” in Beja and Norris, pp. 122-27 

Pearce, “Nausicaa,” in Beja and Non‘is, pp. 106-14.

Questions to Consider:

1. Seeing Bloom through the eyes of Gerty, do we learn anything new
about him? 

2. Why does Bloom make no effort to talk with Getty?

Homer and Joyce: Comparative Outlines:

CHAPTER TWELVE, PART 2

Chapter 12, Part 2

Lecture Fifteen -- Citizen Cyclops, Il

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

The previous lecture treated the narrative of chapter 12 and its

reenactment of what happens in the Cyclops episode of Homer’s

epic; this lecture will focus on interpolated passages-32 in all-

that break up the tone and style of the narrative. While the

unnamed narrator talks his way through the chapter, telling us all

that is said and done in a colloquial diction, the interpolated

passages are conspicuously written in a variety of styles meant to

parody particular kinds of writing. This lecture shows how the

work of the unnamed parodist pops the balloon of Irish

nationalism and reveals the folly of our own impulse to magnify

Bloom beyond his all-too-human proportions.

Outline

I. In chapter 12, the parodic intrusions spring from the restlessness of

Joyce’s imagination, his unrelenting quest to find new perspectives on

the action and conversation of his characters.

A. The speaking voice of the original narrator is interrupted 32 timesby a rival narrator-a parodist.

1. This rival narrator is clearly a writer, not a talker. 

2. Because the rival narrator works in a variety of styles thatparody various kinds of writing, he is commonly called theparodist.

B. The parodist offers yet another perspective on the action of this
chapter.

1. From the outset, the narrator makes us see Bloom in a newway-through the eyes of a man who scorns all Jews. 

2. When the narrator mocks a Jewish merchant for demandingpayment of a debt, the parodist apes the formal language of alawsuit-comically overstating the gravity of the debt.

II. To reveal the fatuity of Irish revivalism, the parodist reconstructs the

contemporary figures in this chapter as gigantic heroes of medieval

epic Written in “translatorese.”

A. As the citizen and the narrator head for the pub, the parodist turnsthe pub into a “shining palace” in a lovely land.

1. The Irish revivalists have repeatedly called for a national epic,but the parodist shows us how ridiculous such an epic wouldbe: a museum piece of nationalistic propaganda. 

2. The parody exposes the difference between the dead languageof translators (translatorese) and the living language of thenovel-the language spoken by contemporary men andwomen of Ireland.

B. The gigantic heroes of the parody reveal the whole revivalist
enterprise as a gigantic balloon just waiting to be popped.

1. In linking the loudmouthed, belligerent citizen with therevivalist tendency to inflate old Irish heroes, the parody alsolinks those heroes to the stupidity of Homer’s one-eyed giant. 

2. The huge list of would-be Irish heroes and heroines in theparody includes many who are not Irish at all, but who areused to mock the extravagance of the claims that revivalistsmake.

III. The parodies chiefly take aim at patriotism, romantic fantasy, and

sentimentality.

A. A would-be newspaper report on Garryowen, the citizen’s dog,reports that he can recite verse that sounds like Old Irish poetryThis, of course, implies that Old Irish poetry sounds like thegrowling of a dog. 

B. The parodist mocks the legend of Robert Emmet, the doomed
martyr to Irish nationalism, and especially Emmet’s “last farewell”
to his fiancee before he was executed. In the parody, the execution
becomes a gloriously sentimental farce played out for a huge
audience of tearful spectators and culminating in the moment when
Emmet’s fiancée accepts a proposal from a handsome young
Oxford graduate.

IV. Inflation drives most of the parodies. Simple actions or statements are

recast in the grand old light of Irish legend or blown up into major

events.

A. When Alf Bergan appears, the parodist calls him a “godlikemessenger. . .radiant as the eye of heaven.” 

B. When the citizen demands that the trees of Ireland be saved, the
parodist reports a grand wedding of a forest ranger with Miss Fir
Conifer of Pine Valley. 

C. When Martin Cunningham says, “God bless all here” as he orders
a drink at the pub, the parodist describes a vast procession of
deacons, abbots, monks, and so on, all heading toward the pub to
bless it. 

D. When the citizen throws the biscuit box at Bloom, the parodist
describes a catastrophe equal to an earthquake.

V. The parodist also ridicules the speeches of Bloom, including his

advocacy of love.

A. When Bloom claims that a hanged man’s erection is a “naturalphenomenon,” the parodist mockingly treats him as a distinguishedscientist.

1. Bloom’s explanation is correct, but we know from otherexamples that his command of scientific phenomena is shaky. 

2. The parodist makes fun of his implied pretensions to scientificauthority here.

B. When Bloom advocates love as an alternative to hatred and
persecution, the parodist mockingly pretends that love is universal.

1. The passage offers a long list of people who love others. 

2. But the passage makes no claim that any of these loves isrequited -- or legitimate. 

3. Also, its threadbare claim that “God loves everybody” hasalready been contradicted by the drunken Bob Doran, who hascalled God a “bloody ruffian” for taking the life of PaddyDignam

C. Hence, the parody raises a question; Can Bloom’s declaration that
love is essential to life withstand the parodist’s withering blast of
sarcasm? The answer is yes--for several reasons.

1. Unlike the citizen, Bloom doesn’t blind himself to anything-including the nightmare of history. 

2. Bloom manifests his sincerity in the simplicity and bluntnessof his language. He speaks without grandiloquence orpretense. 

3. Though Joyce may have wished to hide his own belief in theredemptive power of love behind a mask of mockery,mockery can’t kill the message. If love is the only alternativeto force and hatred, it will prevail against everything-evenridicule.

D. The final parody of the chapter mocks our own impulse to see
Bloom as the reincarnation of Elijah, heroically speaking truth to
power

1. Having seen Bloom stand up to the citizen, we may concludethat the modern Elijah is not the Streetwise preacher advertisedby the throwaway but, rather, Leopold Bloom. 

2. But in the parodist’s account of Bloom borne to heaven asElijah, Bloom ends up in earthbound form-like a bit of dirtthrown by a shovel.

Supplementary Reading:

Nunes, “Beyond the ‘Holy See' "

Questions to Consider: 

1. Why does the parodist hold up Bloom to ridicule-since he is already

being ridiculed and scorned by the narrator?

2. What do the parodies tell us about Joyce’s conception of his own

relation to the Irish Revival?

CHAPTER TWELVE, PART 1

Chapter 12, Part 1

Lecture Fourteen -- Citizen Cyclops, I

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This chapter takes its name from a gigantic one-eyed savage

known as the Cyclops. When Ulysses and his men get trapped in

the cave of the Cyclops, who threatens to kill and eat them,

Ulysses cleverly finds a way to escape with his men. In this

chapter, the counterpart of the Cyclops is a myopic, rabidly

nationalistic, virulently anti-Semitic drunkard known simply as the

citizen. Caught in a pub, which takes the place of Homer’s cave,

Bloom is scorned for his Jewishness by the citizen and the

narrator, but in a rare moment of self-assertion, he denounces the

persecution of his race. Just as Ulysses makes his escape while

taunting the Cyclops, so does Bloom get away in the very act of

infuriating the citizen by defiantly proclaiming that even Christ

was a Jew. This first lecture on chapter 12 treats just the portions

“spoken” by the narrator, who is on the spot and part of the action.

The second lecture on chapter 12 will treat the parodies that

frequently interrupt the narrative.

Outline

I. In the Homeric episode on which chapter 12 of Ulysses is based,

Ulysses escapes from the cave of a one-eyed monster purely by using

his wits.

A. Ulysses and his men enter a cave that belongs to one of theCyclops, a race of savages who know nothing of other people anddo not even meet among themselves. The owner of the cave-aCyclops named Polyphemos--returns, traps them in the cave byclosing the entrance with a huge boulder, and threatens to kill anddevour all of them. 

B. After getting Polyphemos drunk, Ulysses uses a sharpened stake to
blind his only eye. 

C. When Polyphemos rolls the boulder from the entrance to let his
rams out, Ulysses and his men each cling to the underbelly of a
ram and make their escape.

II. While making his escape, Ulysses goads Polyphemos by giving his

name (“Nobody”), prompting Polyphemos to call down a curse on him

A. As Ulysses and his men sail away, Ulysses taunts Polyphemos.

1. He says that Zeus will punish him for daring to eat his ownguests in his own house. 

2. This goads Polyphemos to throw a huge rock in front ofUlysses’s ship.

B. Even though the rock nearly drives the ship back to shore, Ulysses
taunts Polyphemos again.

1. Having up to now concealed his true name from the Cyclops,Ulysses now reveals his identity. 

2. Polyphemos then curses Ulysses and throws a bigger stone athim. Though the stone misses, the curse ensures that Ulyssesalone will survive the voyage home.

III. In this chapter, Joyce combines features of Homer’s Polyphemos and a

real-life Irishman to create the myopic, xenophobia, rabidly

nationalistic citizen, whose contempt for Bloom is warmly shared by

the narrator.

A. As a one-time shot putter eager to promote Irish sports, the citizenis based not only on Homer’s Polyphemos but also on MichaelCusack, founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, who loathed“imported” manners and customs. 

B. Wholly myopic, the citizen sees nothing of value in anything that
is not purely and essentially Irish in his sense of the word, and he
and the narrator both despise Bloom.

1. The citizen loathes the English. 

2. He loathes all Jews, even those born in Ireland, as Bloom was 

3. He and the narrator both despise Bloom-especially for hisinsistence on seeing things from different viewpoints.

IV. Just as Ulysses fights Polyphemos with his words and his brain, so

does Bloom fight the citizen with words.

A. Though Bloom’s quarrel with the citizen may seem a mock-heroicreduction of Ulysses’s struggle with Polyphemos, Bloom uses hisknock-me-down cigar the way Ulysses uses his sharpened stake.

1. Ulysses screws the burning pointed stake into the eye of thedrunken Polyphemos. 

2. With Ulyssean prudence, Bloom takes a cigar instead of adrink, and he uses its burning end to punctuate his attack onpersecution and injustice.

B. Thus, he openly defies the citizen’s rabid jingoism and anti-
Semitism.

V. In defying the citizen, Bloom confronts all the contempt that his

Jewishness has provoked from other Dubliners.

A. Though Bloom has come to the pub to meet Martin Cunninghamon behalf of insurance for Paddy Dignam’s widow, his motives arewillfully misconstrued.

1. He’s accused of “defrauding widows and orphans.” 

2. He’s suspected of having won a 20-to-1 bet at the Gold Cuprace and of hiding his winnings so that he will not have to buydrinks for the spongers at the pub.

B. His manhood is called into question.

1. Hearing that Blazes Boylan is organizing Molly’s conceittour, the narrator instantly concludes that Boylan will“organize” her sexually. 

2. The citizen cannot believe that Bloom could have begotten hisown children

C. Bloom is a victim of essentialism; because the citizen believes that
Ireland must be absolutely free of foreign influences, an Irish Jew
is a contradiction in terms for him.

1. In the myopic eye of the citizen, the world is split between usand them, and love is the bond we share with all those whohate what we hate: others. 

2. The citizen claims that Jews bring “bugs” into Ireland withthem. 

3. The citizen calls Jews “strangers in the house”-a phrase theIrish have traditionally applied to the English occupiers oftheir native land. 

4. The citizen spits on Bloom’s claim to be Irish. 

5. The narrator sneers at his efforts to work for Irishindependence

VI. In the face of this contempt, Bloom defiantly proclaims his Jewishness

denouncing persecution and hatred,

A. He says that he belongs to “a race. . .that is hated and persecuted.” 

B. Even though he’s supposedly the reincarnation of Ulysses, the
great Greek warrior, his only alternative to force, hatred, and
history is love-the gospel of Christ.

VII. Just as Ulysses goads Polyphemos during his escape, so does Bloom

goad the citizen as he makes his getaway from the pub and, in the

process, gets threatened with a would-be crucifixion.

A. When the drunken citizen mocks him yet again as he leaves,Bloom reminds him that Christ was “a jew like me”-and therebyinfuriates the citizen. 

B. Reenacting the rage of Polyphemos, the citizen throws at the
departing Bloom a biscuit box (cracker box) in place of a boulder 

C. Threatening to crucify Bloom for using the name of Jesus, the
citizen thereby threatens to reenact the crucifixion and, thus,
ironically, to confirm Bloom as a Christ figure-a questionable
identity.

Supplementary Reading

Harty, “Cyclops”

Kenner, pp. 93-106.

Questions to Consider:

1. Why does this chapter never enter the mind of Bloom? Why are we

consistently made to see him through the eyes of the contemptuous

narrator?

2. Given that Bloom has repudiated the Jewish religion and all its

practices, why does he openly identify himself as Jewish in this

chapter?