The implications of this biblical story for Ulysses are manifold: "Martha" is Martha Clifford; "Mary," is Marion (or Molly) Bloom; also foreshadowed here is the fact that Bloom will eventually choose the lethargic Molly (who sleeps with her head at Bloom's feet) instead of choosing the busy typist, Martha. Also, the background story of the good fortune of the resurrected Lazarus contrasts well with the plight of the Dubliners, for whom there seems to be little hope of rebirth or change. Most important, though, is the deliberate setting of the visit by Jesus to the two sisters. This lack of sexual content probably attracted Bloom to the biblical event, and the complex religious symbolism should dissuade any reader from understanding only simple parallels between Christ and Bloom. In "The Lotus-Eaters," Joyce sees Bloom and Christ as being not two martyrs but as being two sexually unfulfilled human beings. Bloom, though, is the sterile one. As he contemplates his bath through Christ's words of consecration over the bread, "This is my body," we realize that, in contrast with Christ, Bloom, at least in "The Lotus-Eaters," is not portrayed as the most "giving" person in the world; Christ, of course, established the Eucharist so that his body could be "given" to all people.
The macrocosm of Bloom's wish to escape from responsibility is epitomized in the microcosm of his inability to enjoy fulfilling sex; and "The Lotus-Eaters" is enhanced by references to all types of jaded sex and to sexual emptiness. Bloom thinks of the United Irishman's charge that the British army in Dublin was infected with syphilis, the association coming after Bloom has just thought of Major Tweedy (Molly's father), that memory, in turn, having been occasioned by Bloom's guilt over Martha's letter. Again, Bloom considers the fanciful notion that Hamlet may have been a woman and that his possible transvestism might have caused Ophelia's death; the reader of Ulysses realizes that this time it is Bloom, not Stephen, whose analogue is Hamlet. Also, Bloom is tempted to feel sorry for gelded horses, but he then reasons that they might be happy that way. And eunuchs (having been castrated to be choir boys for the Catholic Church) lead placid lives, even though they do tend to run to fat later in life. Rather parenthetically, Bloom is happy that the two buttons on his waistcoat that were inadvertently left open were not "farther south." Finally, Bloom's contemplated visit to the baths is the culmination of the images suggesting sexual sterility in the chapter. His grand desire is to masturbate (a dead-end type of proposition), and he pictures himself lying in the water with a limp phallus, the very opposite of manly self-sufficiency and masculinity. Languid and limp, Bloom need not make important decisions about sex.
