But Bloom is not wholly a simple Christ figure, or even a mere hero figure; here, he is also a know-it-all, "Mister Knowall," and there is a slight justification in the annoyance of the drunken patrons at his lengthy explanations and tedious moralizing. Bloom explains, as was noted, the "scientific" and the "natural phenomenon" behind an erection of a hanged man, and Joyce recounts for us the sour narrator's comments to his audience-readers: "The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley." Also, in answer to the Citizen's intemperate description of the British government's barbaric treatment of its sailors, Bloom further rouses the ire of the cyclops by asking "Isn't discipline the same everywhere?"; later, Bloom enunciates a typically passivistic commonplace: "Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred." Bloom, unlike the cyclops, sponsors love: "I mean the opposite of hatred."
But if this chapter portrays one of Bloom's major faults — that is, his sentimentality — it also emphasizes his heroism. Bloom is suffering the excruciating knowledge that, at this very time, Boylan is cuckolding him (starting at 4:30 p.m.); yet he persists in his errand of mercy for the Dignam family. He desperately tries to divert the conversation from the tricky Boylan to the virtues of lawn tennis (an "English" game and therefore inimical to Irish nationalists). Boylan, however, is so much on his mind that he misspeaks "wife's admirers" for "wife's advisers." He also passively suffers the Citizen's comments about a dishonored wife's bringing ruin to Ireland, sentiments expressed (ironically) by the pro-British Deasy in "Nestor," and he voices compassion for Mrs. Breen — only to have the Citizen call Denis a "half and half," a judgment which the cyclops means to be applied to Bloom.
Bloom's business affairs are equally frustrating. Hynes is spending the money which he owes to Bloom on drinks. And Nannetti, Bloom learns, is leaving for the House of Commons without deciding anything about the Keyes ad.
