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Bloom the Father, Stephen the Son: the Paternal Relationship in Ulysses

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Bloom the Father, Stephen the Son: the Paternal Relationship in Ulysses Bloom the Father, Stephen the Son: The Paternal Relationship in Ulysses When it comes to James Joyce's Ulysses many critics and scholars agree that one of the most important themes in the novel, if not the most important, is the search for paternity. Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom both wander through life looking for someone, whether consciously or subconsciously, to fill the void in their lives; in Stephen's case, a father figure to replace his biological father Simon who has failed to support his family both financially and emotionally; in Bloom's case, someone to replace the son he never had a chance to raise due to a premature death. Many writers on Ulysses have explored the relationship between Stephen and Bloom and the parallels it draws to the relationship between Telemachus and Odysseus in Homer's The Odyssey. However, this paper will examine the continuation of the Daedalus/Icarus myth in Joyce's Ulysses, and both Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus' need for one another. To begin, one must be familiar with the myth of the man whom Stephen shares his name with. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, as translated by A.S. Kline, Daedalus, an "artificer", builds a labyrinth for King Minos only to later be deceived and entrapped by the king in his own invention with his son Icarus. Daedalus then devises a plan to escape by way of flight, for "Minos rules everything but he does not rule the heavens". After building a pair of wings for Icarus and himself, held "together with thread at the middle, and bees'-wax at the base", Daedalus instructs his son not to fly too close to the sun or too low to the water, but to "take the middle way". However, Icarus disregards his father's advice and flies too close to the sun, causing the wax to melt, and his plummet into the ocean where he drowns. Although Stephen shares his name with Daedalus, and in so many ways is representative of Daedalus by the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in Ulysses he resembles Icarus while Bloom reflects the qualities of Daedalus. This becomes evident in chapter fourteen, entitled "The Oxen of the Sun", the first chapter in which Stephen and Bloom are in a social situation together. When Bloom arrives to the maternity hospital he finds Stephen and his colleagues lounging around drinking, and "reserved young Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded still of more mead" (14.318.194-5). As Stephen, the most inebriated of the group, is demanding more to drink, we can see that Stephen has "fallen" in a sense, just as Icarus did. In Portrait Stephen is both irritated and embarrassed by his father's drinking as he follows him "meekly about the city from bar to bar". When thinking back on that night he describes how "one humiliation had succeeded another" and how the next morning, as his father's shaking hand was rattling the cup in its saucer, he "had tried to cover that shameful sign of his father's drinking-bout of the night before by moving his chair and coughing" (P 90). Stephen's drinking is a sign that both the things he hoped to achieve, and the artist he hoped to be, have not happened. Instead he has become a drinker like his father, which in Portrait, he considered an embarrassment. In that respect Stephen has fallen the way Icarus did. As this scene continues, Bloom begins to fulfill his role as Daedalus, the father-figure. The resemblance becomes apparent when Bloom comments on Stephen's behavior in the hospital: "so grieved he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores" (U 14.320.275-76). Leopold is obviously upset over Stephen's conduct, and finds it unfortunate that Stephen has chosen these men to keep company with. As Stuart Gilbert states in his study on this novel, "Mr. Bloom plays here a ripely paternal role as he sits, humdrum, among these harum-scarum, genuinely shocked by their callousness" (295). The absolute most important moment in this scene, and perhaps in the novel, in terms of Bloom demonstrating his "paternal role", occurs after Stephen reacts to the sound of "a black crack of noise in the street" (408), in other words thunder. His immediate reaction is that of fear; "his pitch that was before so haughty uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm" (413-15). Bloom steps right into that fatherly role comforting Stephen, speaking "calming words to slumber his great fear", and describing it as a "hubbub of noise" that was just a natural phenomenon (425-26). As Stephen's colleagues ridicule his reaction, Bloom's "calming" explanation offers consolation, something Stephen has not received much at all throughout the novel. Although the genesis of Stephen's fear doesn't affect the paternal reaction of Bloom, it is significant to the theory stated earlier describing him as the Icarus character in this father-son relationship. There are a few different opinions on what exactly Stephen is afraid of when the sound of thunder erupts. Gilbert, as well as other scholars, believe that Stephen is afraid because he thinks the thunder is the sound of God's anger towards him. Gilbert writes, "when the crash of thunder comes, Bloom seeks to reassure Stephen by talk of a 'natural phenomenon'. This leads to a passage in the manner of Bunyan, where Phenomenon personifies the God of this world" (302). This theory is well supported when considering Stephen's previous statements of God being just a noise in the street, and his fear of God growing up in Portrait; even though Stephen has shed those fears for the most part, it is not farfetched for the alcohol to have caused their return. However, other scholars view his reaction to the thunder as a product of his hydrophobia. Dr. Sandra Pearce's essay on Joyce's use of umbrellas and water in Ulysses supports this theory: "The breaking of Mrs. Purefoy's water coincides with the downpour from the heavens- both natural phenomena, both feminine, life giving fluidity. Hydrophilic Bloom can appreciate it; hydrophobic Stephen cannot" (207). Although both theories are realistic, the re-enforcement of Stephen's fear of water is significant when comparing him to the fallen Icarus. As the myth goes, when Icarus' wings melted, he fell into the ocean and as he went under, frightened, he called out his father's name. And just as Daedalus could not help his son, Bloom's comforting words could not help frightened Stephen, "for he had in his bosom a spike names Bitterness which could not by words be done away with" (14.323.430-31). So why is it that Stephen and Bloom fall in to these roles? They are not blood relatives, they have no obligation to one another; they are merely two men that vaguely know each other through other acquaintances. Why then are these two specific men so closely representative of Icarus and Daedalus? There exists a need in each of these individuals to fill the chasm in their respective father-son relationships, or the lack of said relationships, and because of this need, they fall naturally into these roles. Bloom is the biological father of one daughter and one deceased son who didn't live past eleven days old. He remains haunted by the thoughts of his dead son as they arise throughout the novel. One such thought occurs in the maternity hospital as he watches Stephen: he remembers the funeral, how it was "the midst of winter" and how "his burial did him on a fair corset of lamb's wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie akeled" (14.320.269-71). Gilbert claims, and I would agree, that this memory entering Bloom's consciousness while observing Stephen "suggests an association in Mr. Bloom's mind between his dead son Rudy and Stephen" (295). Although these are not the first thoughts of Rudy he has in the novel, this particular scene displays the need that Bloom possesses to replace him. In that same passage noted previously, when he reflects on that memory of the funeral, "sir Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his friend's son and was shut up in sorrow" (271-73). Clearly the pain caused by the death of Rudy still exists in Bloom, and when he sees Stephen, an intelligent young man who has seemed to have lost his way, he becomes drawn to him. Stephen on the other hand is in dire need of a father figure for guidance. He has failed to become the artist he dreamed of being and now spends a great deal of time drinking and getting himself into trouble. Because of the relationship with his biological father has deteriorated to almost nonexistent, he has had no one to keep him from going down this path and the reader can see how he has reached a new low with scenes later on that involve breaking a chandelier and getting into a fight. The alcohol has melted the wax on his metaphoric wings causing his fall into this life that only a few years ago he would have considered a failure, which is why naturally he is drawn to Bloom as he (Bloom) is trying to fill that role.
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