The Sirens chapter reads the best out of anything we have read so far. I was really surprised by this. Thought it makes complete sense, I didn’t think Joyce would create such an obvious connection. Not just the arrangement of words, which sounds amazing next to each other, but also the imagery. In particular I like the lines on the bottom of page 263 “Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: love-lorn.” Joyce, as a narrator, writes very lyrically, almost sing songy. For example on page 269 “…He ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cod’s roes while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward, ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate.”
Bloom is ignored completely in this chapter. He asks questions that are not answered. It is almost as if he doesn’t exist, or is not even there. Though the chapter is in his perspective, he is just a spectator; the only person that notices him is Pat, who is deaf anyway. The ear is upheld very strongly in this chapter, the sounds of the music and the other conversations are the main sensory intake.
A couple things I didn’t really understand, I know that it is four o’clock but why does that number keep coming up. Bloom says “four” then he says beware of nineteen four and then some other people say four. I wonder what this means?
Also, its only four O’clock and it is the third meal Bloom has had today. Further it is his second kidney. What’s with this guy and Kidney’s. I have a theory about the kidney and Prometheus, the one who brought fire and knowledge to man!!! The light of knowledge!!! Then Prometheus was condemned to have his Kidney eaten out for eternity because he was immortal and it would grow back. But the Hercules saves him.