Analysis
Episode Five, “The Lotus Eaters,” is the first episode
in which the thematic parallel to Homer begins to dominate the text.
In The Odyssey, Odysseus’s men eat the flower of
the Lotus Eaters and become drowsily complacent, forgetting about
their quest to return home. In Episode Five, it is mid-morning and
Bloom’s thoughts are lazy as he digests his breakfast and kills
time before Paddy Dignam’s funeral at 11:00.
Bloom’s attention wanders, yet the motif tying together many of
his sentiments and observations is intoxication or drugged escapism.
We are prepared for the motif from the opening page of the episode—Bloom
imagines the Far East as a lazily intoxicating place. This motif
then extends to other scenarios: Bloom notices the stupefied, effete
horses drawing a tram; he thinks of the calming narcotic effect
of smoking. Bloom spends a large section of the episode considering
the stupefying power of religious ceremony—he assumes that religious
missionaries have to compete with a lazy, narcotic lifestyle to
win over a native population, and he appreciates the stupefying
effect of Latin. The motif of intoxicated escapism sets the appropriate
mood for an episode in which not much happens, and Bloom is largely
alone. The motif also points to Bloom’s efforts to escape his own
thoughts about Molly’s impending infidelity.
Indeed, the motif of lazy intoxication leads to a set
of related motifs, most of which point implicitly back to Molly.
Bloom associates exotic narcotics with the East, and his imaginations
of the East, in turn, relate to Molly. We learned in Episode Four
that Molly grew up in Gibraltar, where her father, Major Tweedy,
was stationed. In Bloom’s mind, Molly’s childhood in Gibraltar links
up with thoughts about Turkey and the Crimean War, with thoughts
about model farms and land schemes in Palestine, and, here in Episode Five,
with imaginings of the lands and people even farther east in Ceylon
or China. Because Bloom’s varied mental pictures of the East connect
with his sense of Molly’s exoticism and eroticism, Molly remains
present even in an episode devoted to Bloom’s erotic correspondence
with another woman—Martha Clifford.
Bloom’s covert correspondence with Martha Clifford offers
us another perspective on the Blooms’ marriage. Instead of Molly being
the adulterous one and Bloom the adoring husband, we begin to consider
Bloom’s own part in the lapse of their relations. Yet Bloom seems
more temporarily amused by Martha’s letter (spelling errors and
all) than committed to having an affair with her. Our new perspective
of Bloom in this episode also offers us glimpses of his more perverse
tendencies: a desire to be punished, a fetish for women’s underclothing,
his fantasies about meeting a woman during or after church.
The scenario of the Martha-Bloom correspondence offers another
motif related to the drugged escapism of the Lotus flower eaters—the
motif of flowers themselves. Bloom chooses the pseudonym “Henry
Flower” (a kind of synonym for “Bloom”). Martha encloses a yellow
flower in her letter to Bloom. Yet even this motif leads back to
Molly. Martha’s flower has no scent, and the final question of her
letter is about his wife’s perfume. Accordingly, Bloom’s imagination
of a tryst with Martha segues through a dream of two biblical doting
women, Mary and Martha, thus leading back to Molly, whose Christian
name is Marion (Mary).
