This episode corresponds to the section in Homer’s Odyssey regarding the Lestrygonians, who were cannibalistic giants that destroyed most of Odysseus’ ships by hurling boulders at them. Images of gluttony and consumption appear throughout this episode.
Early in the episode, Bloom is thinking about the death of Stephen Dedalus’ mother which leads him to consider the strains of having a large family. He sees children as the devourers of their parents, almost a reversal of the Kronos myth where the father devours his children.
Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That’s in their theology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat you out of house and home.
(p. 151)
As Bloom walks and the hour approaches noon, he gets hungry. Joyce uses cannibalism as a metaphor to describe Bloom’s feelings. He feels drained and weak, as though his energy was consumed by those people with whom he interacted earlier in the day. I can relate. Sometimes I have to interact with people who seem to feed off my very being.
This is the very hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.
(p. 164)
Bloom goes to Burton’s restaurant to eat and is repulsed by the men there savagely consuming meat, which I find ironic considering the relish with which Bloom ate the kidney earlier in the book. I suspect he experienced one of those moments of horror when you see yourself in others and feel disgust at the realization that you are no different from them.
His heart astir he pushed in the door of Burton’s restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slop of greens. See the animals feed.
(p. 169)
Unable to dine in Burton’s he turns and exits. At that moment he has an epiphany as he realizes that killing is a part of eating and that in our society, just as in the animal world, there are two kinds of creatures: the hunters and the hunted.
He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!
(p. 170)
Bloom winds up at a vegetarian restaurant to eat and while he is there his mind wanders as he starts to think about images of goddesses represented in art. The curved images of the divine feminine merge with images of digestion, thereby turning the digestive cycle into a symbol for the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth as embodied in the archetype of the triple goddess.
His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care what man looks. All to see. Never speaking, I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods, golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar, imagine it drinking electricity: gods’ food. Lovely forms of woman sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked. I’ll look today. Keeper won’t see. Bend down let something fall see if she.
(p. 176)
There are lots of other great sections in this episode, and I personally feel like I could write a whole series of posts on all that is here (occult symbolism, bawdy humor, freemasonry, social mores, prejudice, and so forth). The writing is extremely rich. But alas, I will move on to the next episode, which ends on page 218 with the phrase: “From our bless’d altars.” But I want to end this post with the concluding paragraphs from this episode because they worked so well for me. As Bloom spots Blazes Boylan, he panics and ducks into the National Museum to avoid him. The pace of the language perfectly captures his frenzied feeling, building in intensity as Bloom seeks escape and safety.
I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Potato. Where did I?
Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.
His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah, soap there! Yes. Gate.
Safe!
(p. 183)
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