Many readers of Joyce's Ulysses, approaching the book unaided, should understand immediately that this chapter is, first of all, filled with many references to long, cylindrical objects, similar to the redhot, stave-like weapon which Odysseus used to blind his captor. For example, the anonymous narrator of this chapter tells of almost being blinded by a street cleaner's "gear"; later, Bloom, while rejecting a drink, accepts a cigar; still later, he almost burns his fingers with it. More important, however, than these visual parallels of the Homeric stake is Joyce's clever technique of literary expansion — that is, his vision for this chapter encompasses other thin, long objects, phallic and otherwise. Bloom, for example, explains "scientifically' why hanged men undergo sexual erections at the moment of execution. J. J. O'Molloy, likewise metaphorically, speaks of the Nelson policy as "putting your blind eye to the telescope"; old Mr. Verschoyle has a long, thin ear trumpet, and the famous interpolation about trees (midway in the chapter) becomes particularly phallic, especially when coupled with the offhand reference to "Deadwood Dicks."
Closely allied to this stake motif is the "eye" metaphor, which is, of course, the more significant of the two. Joyce's main point in this episode is to satirize those people who, like the cyclops, see things (think about things) with only one eye — that is, those people who operate with a limited vision of the world, those who are partially, or wholly, intellectually "blind." Joyce's alcoholic and extremely anti-Semitic Fenian, for example, is obsessed with hatred for Britain. In his drunken rage, he distorts Bloom's personality and so thoroughly exasperates Joyce's protagonist that, for the first time in Ulysses, Bloom firmly erects his self-esteem and asserts his true nature. Likewise, the symbolic cyclops in this chapter, like his prototype, is not only chauvinistic but he is also a real phony. As the spiteful but clever, anonymous narrator asserts, this "cyclops!' has reason to fear a patriotic Irishman because of his shady dealings in the eviction of an Irish family.
Thus eyes predominate in "The Cyclops." Generally, the "villains" (or incompetents) are described as being one-eyed; the protagonist, in contrast, is described as having two eyes, or at least as being "codeyed" — that is, as being "Godeyed." Thus, the Citizen-cyclops is first seen rubbing his hand in his eye, and at the end of the episode, he misses hitting Bloom with the biscuit tin (a parallel to Polyphemus's rock) which he hurls because he is blinded by the sun (here, there is a possible parallel of Bloom's being the son of God).
