Chapter 16

The "Emmaeus" episode drifts sleepily through Bloom's thoughts in the cab shelter, reiterating mostly familiar themes in new terms, with cliches and loopy digressions. The language is purposefully hazy, veering off on tangents and mixing up characters (e.g., the referrent of "he" is often unclear), and reflects the time of night and Bloom's (and maybe Joyce's) fatigue.

Cliches pepper the sentences, in a unqiue way. Usually a cliche is a shortcut for a writer. Here Joyce uses a superabundance of tired language to represent the narrative from different angles, to state and then overstate: "En route, to his taciturn, and not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr. Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober..." The technique has the effect when read of forcing the reader to question of the authority and the reality of what's been written, which is the exact opposite intended effect of a cliche. Right?

The narrative seems to make itself sleepy, as it often cuts itself off with an "etcetera" or an impatient change of topic. "We can't change the country. Can we change the subject?"

The topics though are also cliched, or over discussed, in the context of the novel: the results of the horse race; adultery; Molly and her "Spanish eyes"; music; Parnell and Irish Nationalism: i.e., all things we've read about before. Here they are written about in the tricky seemingly straightforward style of the newspaper Bloom glances at and addressed at face value to the greatest degree yet (though really its a layering of conflicting facts).

The sailor Murphy is a double for Bloom, or more like a false Bloom. He claims to seen many strange things, been separated from his wife, and to have a son like Telemachus who's gone to sea. He is a sailor/adventurer but unlike Bloom he gets no real thrill out of his experiences. It's strongly hinted he has invented some or all of his stories: Bloom thinks "referring to friend Sinbad", mocking him. But then, he goes on to add his story about the Italians is, maybe, plauisble. The sailor says his favorite book was Arabian Nights which seems like his inspiration for his tales.