This episode is probably the hardest we've read so far. I had a hectic weekend and not too much time to soak in the nuances of Cyclops. But I'll do my best.
Joyce is highly concerned with points of view throughout Ulysses, but in this episode the obsession is more obvious than ever before. In Aeolus Joyce provoked us to distrust the narrative by interrupting the story with newspaper headlines. This chapter takes this technique to a new extreme. The narrator is a character who we have never met - one with a very narrow point of view. And we get interrupted again, this time with whole passages that sometimes span pages. Like the headlines in Aeolus, their relevance to the plot is pretty thin. They demonstrate how the style of the writer is indicative of his point of view. If there is a goal to convey the truth clearly in any of these passages, it is completely undermined - usually because the rhetoric is trying to entertain. Joyce is trying to remind us that journalists and others have allegiances other than the truth.
It seems like everyone except for Bloom is cycloptic - that is, one-eyed and unable to put themselves in other people's shoes. This trait of Blooms is becoming more and more important to the idea of a "modern epic". A few characters that we don't really like that much are called heroes in this chapter. All together Bloom is pushed around by the guy who's giving us the information. I think Joyce is prompting us to respond by noticing Bloom's heroism. He's given tangible adversaries in this episode and Bloom shows some courage (kind of). But what's important is that Bloom is pitted against people who can't consider other perspectives.
This makes Bloom's empathy seem less like a quirk and more like a magic power.
1 comment:
Up to this point, any time of tried to think of Bloom as a hero, I just notice how unheroic he is. You've really helped me realize his heroism in regards to perspective. If anything Bloom is sympathetic. He often thinks of the woman giving birth and we even saw him feel bad for Dilly Daedalus. And while he elaborates on his ideas for some time, he usually seems keen on making life better for his community. His sympathetic quality alludes to the literary heroes Bloom is compared to. For example his sympathy makes him Christ-like, and his long-windedness reminds me of Hamlet. And I think that we see one of Bloom's most heroic moments in this chapter when he mentions how the Jews are a persecuted people. Even though the others mock him about it and imply he is being political, asking, "are you talking about the new Jerusalem," he responds plainly, "I'm talking about injustice" (332). This line shows how Bloom notices pure injustice, or evil. Along with this would come a sense of justice, something a hero should have.
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