This reading session marked the completion of Cyclops, episode 12.
Summary
Bloom returns from the courthouse, where he has been looking for Martin Cunningham. Cunningham, feeling the tension in the air, makes a quick exit with Bloom, Jack Power and Crofton. Their hasty exit in a jaunting car cues in another interpolation, a short report of a kind of nautical farewell, and is full of sailing technicalities.
Though Bloom quits the pub, the citizen does not keep quiet. The situation turns nasty with him rushing out and bawling at Bloom. As onlookers enjoy the scene, Bloom starts to retaliate, evoking names of famous - though here irrelevant - Jews including Mendelssohn, Karl Marx, Mercadante, Spinoza and even Jesus and his father. Enraged, the citizen storms into the pub. It is time for another interpolation, another parody of another departure.
Just as the jarvey goes round the corner, the citizen hurls the biscuitbox after Bloom. It misses the target and the old tinbox clatter[s] along the street (12.1857). The interpolation that follows is gigantic in nature, dealing as it does with an earthquake. Bloom's escape is parodied in the very last paragraph of the episode in which Joyce at first uses biblical language describing how the prophet Elijah ascended to the heavens and ends the episode with ordinary language.
Cyclops, episode 12, bears the closest similarity in the entire novel to Homer's Odyssey. There is similarity between the citizen and Polyphemus as well as between the biscuit box thrown by the citizen and the rock thrown by Polyphemus. Some of the other features that invoke Homer's work are (a) the numerous references to 'eye' in the singular form hinting at the single-eyed giant, (b) Joyce’s playing with names through out the episode with how Odysseus introduces himself to Polyphemus by saying his name is "Οὖτις", and (c) the gigantism of the entire episode.
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| Polyphemus Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polyphemus.png |
(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)
