On Ulysses: Joyce’s Book of Memory [P3]

Part 3 —

Lestrygonians: Humanism and Hunger

Hugh Kenner documents a conversation between Joyce and Frank Budgen in which Joyce describes Bloom as “A complete man, a good man” (Kenner 1987, 5). Yet much of the critical literature on Ulysses focuses on how Bloom is incomplete, the fact that he is searching for son, that he is in a sexless marriage, and that he is an outsider. How can such a deeply flawed character be considered “complete” by Joyce? I contend that Bloom contains the “big word” within him on a subconscious level, a wholehearted, naive, almost automatic concern for others. This concern extends even beyond species, demonstrated by his sympathy for the seagulls in “Lestrygonians” (8.73). For Bloom, all beings deserve love and recognition, which corresponds well with his conception in “Cyclops” that a nation is simply “the same people living in the same place” (12.272).

This is where the dichotomy of incomplete and complete becomes crucial. Where does this habitual, almost machine-like humanism come from? In my reading, it is because Bloom is flawed, broken, and has something missing inside of him that he hungers constantly for the world around him. As Schwarz notes, the power of hunger dominates Bloom with peristaltic regularity such that the language of his stream of consciousness is transformed (Schwarz 1987, 130). Naturally, Bloom’s bodily needs influences the style and content of his memories, and even his ability to remember at all.

Steinberg has worked to great length compiling the extensive parallels between “Proteus” and “Lestrygonians.” He remarks that:

The many parallels that occur between Proteus and Lestrygonians would seem to suggest that in a number of important ways Bloom is merely a weak, materialistic, and sometimes comic echo of Stephen. That each man is ineffectual in his own sphere, critics have long pointed out. But that each concerns himself with the same problems on different levels of philosophic profundity has not generally been recognized (Steinberg 1973, 87).

French continues this argument, citing the novel’s themes of relativity and recurrence, and the motif of parallax, as being the “different levels of philosophic profundity.”

Parallax refers to the apparent change in the position of an object resulting from a change in the direction or position from which it is viewed. In astronomy the word denotes the apparent difference in the position of a heavenly body with reference to some point on the surface of the earth or some hypothetical point[…] (French 1976, 106).

Whereas Stephen emphasizes how objects are perceived, Bloom is fixed on understanding the objects themselves. Stephen can only view the dog in “Proteus” as an aggressive threat. Bloom considers the blind stripling in “Lestrygonians” as multifaceted, as a person who eats, has sexual desires, and may need help crossing the street because of their disability.

There are three major differences in how “Lestrygonians” represents memory compared to “Proteus.” Firstly, the automaticity discussed previously by which Bloom acts is itself a type of memory, a mechanical or habitual memory. Whereas Stephen broods and lacks action, Bloom thinks little before he moves. The distinction likely arises from the fact that Stephen is an exile and is not familiar with Dublin, whereas Bloom probably walks the same path around Dublin everyday. With the benefit of routine, Bloom can wander thoughtlessly, exemplified by the lack of interior monologue during his conversation with Mrs. Breen. This mechanical way of life leaks into Bloom’s perceptions, truncating his thoughts into bursts as he instinctively runs away from Boylan at the end of the chapter. “Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart” (8.1190). However, this difference also connects Stephen and Bloom in that both are men in mourning that repress thoughts and memories about the people they are mourning for. Whereas Stephen redirects his depressive feelings into long-winded dissertations on philosophy, Bloom blatantly blocks these thoughts out in a manner identical to his habitual stream of consciousness: “Our. Little. Beggar. Baby” (6.329).

Secondly, Bloom’s sensations and memories are multisensory. This continues the parallax motif, in which Bloom experiences reality through all of his senses whereas Stephen only processes sight. Additionally, Bloom is a sexual person, and his hunger for love and intimacy gives his stream of consciousness a lush, romantic quality that Stephen’s lacks. The most blatant demonstration of this difference is Bloom’s sweeping memory of making love to Molly on the Howth. The beauty of this Proustian episode is made tragic when Bloom is unable to maintain his mnemotechnical erection, dragged back to the present by two flies stuck together, a reminder of his wife’s impending affair. Bloom thinks: “Me. And me now” (8.917). This implicates Bloom in the discussion about personal identity and guilt in “Proteus.” Whereas Stephen is disappointed that he has not progressed as an artist or an adult, Bloom feels shame about the difference between his condition in Ulysses and the nostalgic image of himself on the Howth. In other words, Stephen is obsessed with what he has yet to gain and Bloom anxiously avoids thinking about what he has lost. In some ways, this is the source of Bloom’s masochistic attitude, where he passively allows Molly’s affair because he feels responsible for their suffering marriage and gets a perverse pleasure from indirectly satisfying her through Boylan or Stephen.

This may simply be a result of generational difference, but I argue that there is something fundamental to Ulysses revealed in the Howth memory. When Molly asks Bloom what “metempsychosis” means, he replies: “That means the transmigration of souls” (4.340–1). When Bloom recalls the Howth, he is summoning the ghosts from across the Liffey, satiating his hunger for unity with his past selves, for recurrence. Against the anxieties about Boylan, the shame he feels about Rudy, and the trauma of his father’s suicide, the mental Lestrygonians of the book, the Howth memory is a retrospective balm that returns Bloom to a sense of wholeness, of “completeness.” This is what Ulysses is to Joyce, and what Molly is to Bloom. It is through this form of spontaneous, wholehearted memory that is perfected in “Penelope,” that allows people to identify what values are truly important, and open the future possibility for empathy and a common humanity.

This analysis lends itself to the third major difference, which is that Bloom’s interactions lead to memories about others, rather than himself. Not only does this support the original thesis that Bloom has an unconditional positive regard for others, but it also paints Bloom’s struggle against his haunting memories as a sympathetic one. Stephen is tortured by memories of his mother, but only insofar as he feels implicated in her death, rather than any actual feelings of love for her. In fact, given how Stephen treats his family, it is likely that his psychological challenges are purely self-involved. In contrast, Bloom mourns the death of Rudy and his father, whose deaths he had no role in. He also regularly thinks about Paddy Dignam, who is not even a relative. Bloom’s depressive feelings come from a sense of loss for humanity in general and as readers we pity Bloom because he does feel responsible for their deaths, whereas Stephen actually committed a misdeed.

Stephen needs Bloom for his indelible hunger for life. However, their union is a slow one because Bloom himself struggles to fully synthesize his humanistic values into art. In order to unlock the power of pure stream of consciousness, they need Molly.