James Joyce Ulysses, Chapter Five

James Joyce ULYSSES, Chapter Five Analysis

Analysis of the mythical motifs in "The Lotus Eaters," Episode 5 of James Joyce's Ulysses

The incident involving the lotus-eaters in Homer's Odyssey is often cited as an example of Odysseus' moral superiority, in regards to other mortals. Homer tells the story of how Odysseus' men, while desperately trying to sail home to Ithaca, accidently wander into the kingdom of a race of individuals whose lives are solely devoted to pleasures. Eating the lotus, a kind of drug, has made the inhabitants lose their initiative and drive to succeed. Odysseus has to force the members of his own crew who eat the lotus back onto the ship, otherwise they will forget their desire to go home and stay indefinitely. Even in this ancient work, there are shades of modern drug addiction: however, Odysseus' puritanical streak enables him to resist the lure of eating the lotus. Odysseus admits that men might be happy living like the lotus-eaters, but he does not believe such a life is fulfilling or good. In James Joyce's retelling of the Odysseus myth in the novel Ulysses, Joyce takes a more playful view of the allure of the lotus-eaters. Joyce takes satirical glee in some of the coarser delights of the modern world, such as tea-drinking, card-playing and gambling, although he seems less certain than Homer that there is a higher purpose in life, an Ithaca for which those trivial pleasures should be abandoned.

In James Joyce's transposing of the narratives and themes of the Odyssey into his contemporary Dublin, the middle-aged protagonist Leopold Bloom's first 'lotus' in Episode 5, called "The Lotus Eaters" is found at the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company. Bloom's wanderings have taken him through the streets of Dublin, not across the world like the first Odysseus. One sip of the tea, although tea is a ubiquitous and humble beverage in Ireland and England, transports Bloom on a fantasy tour of the Far East islands in his mind. Unlike Odysseus, who does not approve of the stupor of the lotus-eaters, and views it as circumventing his goals, Bloom can appreciate the appeal of a lotus like tea because of his otherwise largely mundane and often unpleasant life. While drinking tea: "His right hand once more slowly went over again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies." This is a world full of sensuality, and very different from the ordinary world of Bloom, who subsides on earthy matter like sausages, and whose wife Molly is cheating on him, unlike the faithful Penelope of Odysseus. Bloom delights in the lotus eaters in a way that temporarily takes him away from his goal of home, where his wife waits, but home is not a pure place that stands in stark contrast to the island paradise.

Even the palliatives offered to Bloom, such as at the chemist's shop, lack the allure of the lotus. "Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature." Modern life is filled with tawdry pleasures, like his wife's performances, the pleasures of the theater, or simply catching a glance of a pretty woman walking down the street.

The people of Joyce's Dublin often pass their time in idleness and pleasures that are not deeply fulfilling, like the Homeric lotus-eaters, but unlike the drugged residents of the ancient tropical paradise, they do not seem happy or physically fulfilled. However, even Homer's residents, according to Odysseus, were not truly happy -- one of the reasons Odysseus was so eager to escape their allure. For example, when Bloom greets McCoy, both express their unhappiness with their physical lives, despite the fact that Bloom has just been fantasizing about the Far East: "Just keeping alive, M'Coy said." Modern human beings are disconnected from a sense of purpose and joy, and seek refuge in tea, drink, and smoking, supplanting real pleasure with false pleasures, and forget what makes life meaningful. Significantly, the novel opens with an image of a young girl reproaching a boy for smoking, saying that it will stunt his growth. Pleasures can stunt one's emotional development, for the young and the old.

The lotus-eater episode, in Ulysses, rather than being deeply erotic, as one might assume to be the case in a chapter with the title of pleasure seekers, instead is full of incidents of pleasure being thwarted, or being enjoyed in a voyeuristic or fetishistic fashion, such as by gazing at people at the theater, buying feminine-scented soaps, and watching upper-class women walk on the street. "Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!" Even the wealthy woman McCoy spots is described in terms of her clothing and fashion, rather than in regards to her actual body and manner.

The chapter is filled with a sense that there is no real enjoyment of the body in modern life. The real Odysseus was not physically faithful to Penelope, although he was emotionally faithful to his wife during his wanderings -- he enjoyed his sexual and territorial freedom. A true modern man, Bloom does not have an affair with an actual woman, but is merely unfaithful in his head and through an erotic, unconsummated correspondence with a woman named Martha Clifford. Enjoying pleasure through writing, and focusing on things such as stockings rather than women's legs, are the lotus-eating or false pleasures of modern life, according to Joyce. Even the newspapers Bloom reads promise happiness with commodity goods: "What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? Incomplete. With it an abode of bliss." Bloom may desire Ithaca, but he is diverted by less meaningful pleasures, like the fantasy of a life on a tropical island while sipping tea or an "abode of bliss" of potted meat.