This chapter, which begins at about 1:00 p.m. and lasts for approximately an hour, traces Bloom's movements through the center of Dublin. It starts when he observes a Christian Brother buying sweets (presumably for some of his students) and ends when Bloom, evading the approaching Boylan, turns into the National Museum to observe the anal details of the statues of Greek goddesses. In the course of his peregrinations, Bloom is handed a throwaway, a handbill (which recalls for us the racehorse Throwaway), by a melancholy-looking YMCA youth; he feels truly sorry for the ragged Dilly Dedalus (Stephen's sister); he feeds some sea gulls broken fragments of Banbury cakes, which he throws down into the Liffey River; he meets an old flame, Mrs. Breen (formerly Josie Powell); he becomes depressed (again) when a cloud crosses the sun (again); he stops into the restaurant of the Burton Hotel to eat, but is sickened by the piggish manners of the patrons and leaves for Davy Byrne's pub, where he has a glass of burgundy and a cheese sandwich; and, finally, he helps a blind youth cross a street.
In Homer's epic, many of Odysseus's men are devoured by the giant, cannibalistic tribe of Lestrygonians, and this particular episode of the novel is filled with many allusions to eating, a good number of them alluding to disgusting eating practices. The bestial actions of the customers in the Burton restaurant, for example, epitomize the analogy with their Greek prototypes.
The opening pages of "The Lestrygonians" record Bloom's sensitivity towards the passing things of life and remind the reader that Joyce's novel is about the humanity that exists behind the common events of daily existence. A handbill handed to a passing advertising canvasser can, in Joyce's great proletariat novel, relate the canvasser to Jesus; similarly, Bloom, when he hears the first few letters of the YMCA youth's "Blood of the Lamb," thinks that the lad is pronouncing Bloom's name, "Bloo . . . Me? No." Also, other details observed by Bloom, though less obviously "symbolic," are not less human: for example, a sign attached to a rowboat advertising trousers; men wearing scarlet letters on tall white hats, walking around Dublin to call attention to Wisdom Hely, the stationer; and a poor hungry child (Dilly) standing outside Dillon's auction rooms while her father is off drinking. The reader is indeed fortunate that Bloom is such a good observer, for, through Bloom's perceptive eyes, the spectators of today can recreate a Dublin that is long past.
