Cyclopes

The "Cylcops" episode is written in a playful mock epic tone that appropiates Homer's catalogues, Bible stories, Irish folk lore, society and sports reporting, and parliamentary debate. The melange of styles most resembles the "skit" the Citizen reads to Joe Hynes et. al., about the tribal chieftain meeting Queen Victoria, which parodies a news story by coolly reporting including absurdities alongside facts. The cavalier tone makes the argument between Bloom and the Citizen seem ridiculous, and in fact all the men's arguing, about the Gaelic language and sports, and foot and mouth disease, cannot be taken seriously. (Or rather, it cannot be read at face value, but rather as a barely disguised attack on Bloom's identity. Identity is the crucial theme in the Odyssey's Cyclops episode; Odysseus pretends to be nobody, than yells at Polyphemus his true identity.) Bloom does take the debates seriously; as the anonymous narrator notes, he will discuss anything. The reader is shown Bloom's power of reasoning and poise in a debate, but Joyce's inclusion of the ridiculously discursive prose digressions ironically inform the reader that Bloom's ability to "see" or understand life is, while quantatively better than the other men's, still blind to the greater scope of life.

By the greater scope of life, I mean the range of singular experiences Joyce shows are facing turn of the century Dubliners, which he seems to argue can't be abstracted to sociology (drinking) or politics (home rule), but which can only be understood truly on a personal, singular level: Dignam's son, Rudy Bloom, Molly's infidelity, Stephen's mother's death, and even the bigotry Bloom has to suffer. The poignancy of these individual cases have the power to be "seen", or felt by others; though sadly they are mostly suffered through alone.

References to eyes abound. My favorite is the "I" relating the half of the chapter in slang, the direct presentation of the action. It reminds me of a John Barth passage about first person narration: "Blind 'I', seeing and signifying nothing". The narrator is blind to the reader, in that we know nothing about him and can't guess who he is (the smart money may be on Simon Deadalus, whose name is full of 'eye' sounds); he is also blind to the true action in the episode, concerned only with the action rather than the ideas motivating the Citizen and Bloom.