Notes on Chapter 16, "Eumaeus"

1.  Homeric parallel:  Odysseus comes back to Ithaca and, in 
disguise, first encounters the goatherd Eumaeus.  In the novel, 
Eumaeus is mirrored in Skin-the-Goat, the Invicible Fitzharris, 
who runs the cabman's shelter.  The sailor Murphy gives a cock 
and bull story about his exploits, as Odysseus gives to Eumaeus.

Also:  identity.  Murphy is a suspicious character, and he knows 
a Simon Dedalus (509-510), but the wrong one.  Reflects 
Odysseus' disquise, and prepares for the Blephen / Stoom 
blending.


2.  Style:  "narrative old," meaning, roughly, that the 
narration is in Bloom's hands.  If Bloom were to really follow 
Mr. Beaufoy's example and take up writing, this, comically 
enough, would be the stylistic result.  

See p. 528 for the self-reflexive mention of such a possibility.

See p. 507:  when Bloom speaks, he sounds like the narrative 
voice.

The narration is cliched, rambling, excessively self-conscious, 
tediously self-qualifying and -correcting.  Grammatically, it is 
afflicted with dangling modifiers and elaborately run-on 
sentences.  Metaphorically, it is horribly mixed and completely 
dead to the embedded metaphors of the language (an obsession for 
Joyce from Dubliners to Finnegans Wake).  

Exceptions:  The Arranger occasionally intervenes.  See p. 543 
for the return of the High Style.  Also, broken-off sentences 
that resemble stream-of-consciousness (e.g. p. 516).  (In 
general, the narration is very close to the meandering of 
Bloom's thoughts in the early chapters.) 

The joke of all this:  Bloom is in control, temporarily, of 
Stephen, so he gets to tell the story for a while.  

The Arranger get a motto of sorts on p. 532:  "a retrospective 
sort of arrangement," which describes the book.

3.  Plot considerations:  we find out that an altercation or 
dispute occurred at Westland Row station (between "Oxen" and 
"Circe") with Mulligan and Haines giving Stephen the slip.  His 
hand is injured, possibly from this, and possibly from the 
fracas in the brothel.  See pp. 506-507.

Murphy is from the ship Rosevean that Stephen saw at the end of 
"Proteus" (511).

4.  Sample awful passages/sentences:

     501 (opening)
     501-502 (mixed metaphors)
     502 (incoherence)
     508 (nonsense, out-of-control metaphor) 


5.  Comic misunderstandings between the two men:  

     p. 518 (on the soul)
     pp. 526-527 (on work and patriotism)
     p. 540 (Bloom the musicologist)