You have eaten all
You have eaten all
In Brief
In Telemachus Haines leaves the tower first,
followed by Mulligan, who calls behind him, “Come out, Kinch.
You have eaten all we left, I suppose.” The remark implies
that Stephen has hungrily finished off the leavings on
Mulligan’s and Haines’ plates, and that doing so is somehow
ill-mannered. This exchange does not reflect well on the
moneyed and supercilious Mulligan, but it also seems to show
Joyce reflecting on the dismal figure he cut when he was 22.
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In Scylla and Charybdis Stephen recalls Mulligan’s complaint verbatim, thinking in Shakespearean idiom of the offense that was laid to his charge: “Come on, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and offals.” Eating food bought by Mulligan (a fact established here, long after the breakfast) contributes to Stephen's feeling that he has been usurped, a Telemachus who eats in his own palace only by the sufferance of the suitors. But his resentment
It is hard to fault Stephen for being hungry and polishing off the scraps that others have left on the table. But the information about his eating habits seems to flatly contradict what he says in Eumaeus, when Bloom solicitously asks, “At what o’clock did you dine?” “Some time yesterday,” replies Stephen. Bloom is astonished until it occurs to him that “it was already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve!” Stephen corrects himself: “The day before yesterday.” Unless both men understand “dine” to refer to something more substantial than breakfast, it seems that Stephen is exaggerating his fast, possibly to solicit sympathy, and certainly to construct a heroic personal mythology of self-abnegation. Joyce represents in Stephen his own self-pitying hunger during his bohemian days in Paris, with Bloom occupying the role played in life by Mary Murray Joyce.
