ULYSSES pp. 109-115 “Hades”

By KATIE ELSE

Finally! The last of Hades (except for my probablynotgoingtobethatfunmarization)

The tweets:

109. LB still wondering about decaying bodies, the cemetery and the idea of burials. PD’s coffin is placed in the grave.

110. LB thinks about the idea of coffins, notices the mystery “man in the macintosh” is the 13th one there

111. LB thinks of his plot, how terrible it would be if PD was alive thru this. Burying the coffin. Hynes takes names doesn’t know LBs 1st

112. Hynes & LB don’t know who MinM is or how he’s vanished so quickly. They finish burying coffin. Dignam fam places wreaths on it

113. walking to Parnell’s grave. LB thinks $ on burial better spent on the living. Thinks of all the dead, once like him.

114. LB thinks:how could we remember everyone who’s died anyway?cheese=milk corpse, cremation>burial,eager to get outta cemetery

115. MC comes w/JHM. LB recognizes,says it was hate @1stsight,pts out JHM’s hat is crushed,JHM pauses,MC pts it out 2,only then does he fix

These final pages of “Hades” begin with the gravediggers burying Dignam’s coffin. And it is here that we meet the enigmatic man in the mackintosh coat, the thirteenth mourner to join the group. He seems to appear out of nowhere and disappear just as mysteriously.

We are privy to more of what we’ve come to learn about Bloom. His pracitcal nature and humanist tendencies lead him to believe the ritual and money spent on funerals and burial is a waste and better spent on the living. This is illustrated in the Dignam family’s predicament; they are in financial straits after his passing but still need to come up with the money for his funeral and burial.

We again see a lack of sentimentality on Bloom’s part when it comes to death. He wonders how one could remember those who have passes anyway. Eventually they would just fade away unless you had devices, like gramophones, to capture them.

Also, in these pages, we see the heart referenced in another way, in what it means to Catholic Ireland. The Sacred Heart of Jesus is one of the greatest devotions in the Catholic Church with its own feast day.

And finally, the men get to escape Hades through the glimmering, open gates of the cemetery. But not before Bloom has a run in with his old frenemy, Menton. Who, even though Bloom is trying to be helpful, will not, almost can not, speak to him, just as Ajax was still angry with Odysseus and would not speak with him in Hades.

Who do you think the man in the mackintosh coat is or is he kind of a non-character who is supposed to symbolize something? 

Do you think Bloom is really unsentimental about death or is it because he was not particularly connected to Dignam? While he claims it would be impossible to remember the dead after too long, he seems to easily conjure pictures of his own son. But that could just be because, well, it’s his son.

Besides Odysseus and Ajax, Bloom and Menton, who are some of your favorite frememies from literature and mythology (The Hills does not count, even though some of them have ‘written’ books).

Check back tomorrow (not in 2 weeks, you say?) for the Hades funmary. My posts have been sersiously lacking in funny pictures so I will try to remedy that. TGIF!