“You had to come back. That haunting sense kind of drew you.” (16.1331-2)

This pair of line occurs in the middle of a section of what appears to be Bloom’s disorganized thoughts about the rise and fall of Charles Parnell. Parnell politically symbolizes a unified, independent Ireland (reflected in Eumaeus with Bloom’s memory of “Insuppressible or was it United Ireland” 1334-5). I consider the frequent recurrence of Parnell’s name (and it is often just his name, without any sort of ideological identification attached besides what “Parnell” evokes) is a kind of haunting in Ulysses. It’s a collective haunting for the nation of Ireland, a memory of what could have been that refuses to go away completely but doesn’t seem powerful or present enough to affect real change.

The adultery scandal that caused the decline of Parnell’s political career is also a major aspect of his presence in Ulysses. A page after the quote I selected, Bloom thinks: “it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms…” (16.1379-1383). Do you think Bloom is consciously comparing himself to Parnell’s mistress’s husband, or is he oblivious enough not to realize that this is his exact situation? In his imagined scenario, infidelity is justified or at least considered a natural outcome. Interestingly, the parallel between these two cases imagines Blazes Boylan as Parnell, and while Bloom hates Boylan to the extent of fearing his name, he seems to admire Parnell (though maybe this should be examined more closely.)