Leopold Bloom first appears in this chapter panting, struggling to keep up with Stephen and “cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket” right before going into the pork butcher’s and buying a lukewarm pig’s crubeen and a cold sheep’s trotter (sprinkled with wholepepper), paralleling his purchase of pork three pages after being introduced (Joyce, 354). Of course, this seems like a puzzling detour to take on a mission to find a son (Stephen), and Bloom would no doubt agree. In fact, upon suspecting that his search for Stephen is a “wildgoose chase” (Joyce, 369), his hesitant mood leads him to also question this decision: “And this food? Eat it and get all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much” (Joyce, 369)
As the mental themes of Circe unfold, Bloom’s guilt over this purchase takes on new dimensions. When his father, Rudolph, appears as a judging figure, Bloom immediately “hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat” (Joyce, 357), out of shame for not keeping kosher. This ethical conundrum serves to illustrate the “concept of the super-ego as a critical father-figure internalized into one’s psychic structure that bursts forth to police the subject at self-doubting moments” (Fordham 2008). Reenacting the recognition of Isaac and Jacob, Rudolph Bloom feels his son’s face in order to assure himself of his identity—exposing Bloom’s own insecurity about his Jewishness. Bloom’s (dis)connection to his religious identity is, rather ambiguously, explored numerous times throughout the novel. While the reader is given clues as to whether Bloom adheres to specific formal customs and learns that other characters regard him as a Jew, his own stance remains unclear.
When the friendly retriever transforms into Garryowen, Bloom ends up succumbing to its demands and feeding it his food. Given his confrontation earlier in the day with the anti-Semitic Citizen, this demand can be viewed as symbolic of the hostile attitudes towards Jewish assimilation of which Bloom is a victim. Despite abandoning his traditions, being baptized three times, and remaining uncircumcised, he is rejected and constantly treated as an outsider. Renouncing formal ties to his ancestry does not exempt him from being ostracized by the pervasive bigoted fictions about Jews that still exists among Dubliners. Although by bourgeois, de jure standards of equality Bloom faces no barriers to integration, he is de facto alienated due to his ethnicity. This is analogous to the juxtaposition presented later on in the episode of fictional domination under a formal contract in S-M, relative to the real domination under a fictional contract with capitalism. Legally speaking, Bloom has an equal right to citizenship as any other. Nevertheless, the only part of his identity that seems real is his exclusion, while his legal rights are a fiction. Thus, despite his best intentions, Bloom is torn between his guilt of betraying his roots and his continuously frustrated struggle towards acceptance.
—Manu Alcalá
Works Cited
Joyce, James. Ulysses: The Corrected Text. Ed. Gabler et al. (New York: Random House, Inc., 1986)
Fordham, Finn. ""Circe" and the Genesis of Multiple Personality." James Joyce Quarterly 45.3/4 (2008): 507-520.
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