Michael Groden - Notes on James Joyce's Ulysses


EPISODES OF ULYSSES: 1. Telemachus - 2. Nestor - 3. Proteus - 4. Calypso - 5. Lotus Eaters - 6. Hades - 7. Aeolus - 8. Lestrygonians - 9. Scylla and Charybdis - 10. Wandering Rocks - 11. Sirens - 12. Cyclops - 13. Nausicaa - 14. Oxen of the Sun - 15. Circe - 16. Eumaeus - 17. Ithaca - 18. Penelope
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PAGES FOR EACH EPISODE: Characters, Location, Time - Thoughts and Questions - Comments by Joyce - Joyce's Schema - The Homeric Parallel - Details that Recur + Same Page, Previous Episode - Same Page, Next Episode
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Lestrygonians: Thoughts and Questions

1) The Homeric parallel for "Lestrygonians" basically involves cannibalism. The Ulysses chapter is full of eating and food. Note, for example, the opening lines, the gulls that Bloom feeds (8:73ff), and the two pubs he goes into--the Burton and Davy Byrne's--in order to have some lunch.

2) An extension of the eating motif is indicated in Joyce's term for the episode's technic: peristaltic--that is, peristaltic movement, the movement of food down the esophagus--and, by further extension, the entire digestive process. How do details like these relate to peristalsis and digestion: the men wearing the letters H.E.L.Y.'S (8:126ff), Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell (8:295-303), the birds whose thoughts Bloom imagines (8:401-5), the statues in the museum (8:929-32)?

3) And note how food and digestion filter into the chapter's language and imagery: 8:495, 8:508, 8:619-20, 8:637-39, 8:666-67, 8:717-18, 8:742.

4) Bloom has many thoughts about Molly during this episode, as at 8:170-74, 8:198-201, 8:587-92, 8:608-13, 8:896-918. Are there any similarities in some or all of these thoughts?

5) Note, also, how often he thinks of the passing of time during the day (it's now between 1:00 and 2:00) and of the impending visit by Boylan: 8:101-9, 8:587-92, 8:633, 8:789-91, 8:852-53, 8:1063, 8:1167-93.

6) At 8:101: "POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS." The ads might be considered to be "pills" (as in "Lotus Eaters"). But how does the first phrase become the second?

7) What is going on at 8:101-9?

8) Bloom thinks "Parallax. I never exactly understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel, parallax." (8:111-12). What do "parallel" and "parallax" mean, and how are they thematically relevant to Ulysses?