Sirens

This might be my favorite episode so far. Bloom's mind seems exhausted. He's tired from his long day. He's drinking. And most importantly, he's growing more and more anxious as Molly's affair approaches. His thoughts jump from Molly to Keye's advertisement to religious exploitation to Martha and back to Molly.

Where Bloom's curiosity and empathy would normally be idle and wandering, now they seem more cynical and direct. In the Lotus-Eaters and Hades episodes his critique of Catholicism was sometimes jovial or melancholic at the most. But here he condemns Father Cowley as a false prophet. The thought of the rat at the cemetery used to creep him out. But now the rat haunts him as he thinks of his own death and his family line.

Bloom reflects on himself more intensely in this chapter then ever before. He even ponders his own name. The barmaids giggling about some old ugly man might as well be laughing at Bloom. Crippled by his growing inconfidence, Bloom turns to Martha to defend himself against Molly's infidelity. But he knows that such an affair would never materialize. Ultimately Martha is very boring to Bloom. He even wonders if he should feel guilty about Martha - an odd thought considering Molly's much more severe violation of their marriage.

Music finds its way into everything in this episode. It seems to muddy up the whole scene and add to the chaos, yet the emotional plot of Dedalus' song is perfectly synchronous with the Boylan's encounter and climax with Molly. Sounds and songs are strongly connected with sexual organs in this episode. The "throbbing" tuning fork is one of the more blatant phallic images we've seen in the entire book so far. Bloom contemplates musical talent as yet another thing other men have that he doesn't. The jingle jangle of Boylan's car is not just a literary but a musical theme that the entire composition returns to as if it were a chorus.

It looks like Kevin might have been right about associating the playful narrative style I pointed out in Scylla with the omniscient narrator - not Stephen. It appears in the beginning of this episode in Stephen's absence. Mr. Dedalus asks the barmaid to bring him a drink with "alacrity". A ridiculous paragraph ensues where everything thing the barmaid does, from running the tap to reaching for the glass is done with "alacrity". But I do think that the fact that it coincides with Stephen's father and no one else is significant. This may be an inherited sarcasm, if it is not literally in the minds of the Dedalus's.