Our Father
Our Father
In Brief
Most of the phrases from the Pater Noster, the Lord's Prayer, pop up in Ulysses. The intent is never devotional. Like a song that has been heard too many times, this staple of the Christian liturgy seems capable of inspiring only parody or mockery in Dubliners.
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Some references to the prayer are frankly hostile. In Telemachus Mulligan notes that "The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation." In Lotus Eaters Bloom looks about him in the church and thinks, "Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come." And when Bloom is immolated by the Inquisition in Circe, Brother Buzz delivers him to the executioners while sanctimoniously intoning, "Forgive him his trespasses."
Bloom often quotes phrases from the prayer in the same childlike, whimsical spirit that he brings to nursery rhymes and advertising jingles. In Calypso he thinks of Boland's breadvan "delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot." In Eumaeus the smell of James Rourke's bakery brings back the phrase "our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable." Later in the chapter he transforms the cliché into "give us this day our daily press." These recollections of an overused phrase are quite lame, but Bloom is in better form in Calypso when he notes the perverse fact that watering something will bring on a rainstorm: "Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven."
The "Our father who art in heaven" that begins the prayer
regularly makes characters think of absent patriarchs that are
all too human. In Hades Bloom remembers his suicidal
father's request that he should take good care of his dog
Athos, a "last wish" presumably honored by his son: "Thy
will be done." Stephen imagines Shakespeare as a
bitter ghost who demands that his murderous will be done by
his son on earth: "Our Father who art in purgatory.
Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot." Boody Dedalus,
starving at home with her sisters, speaks of "Our
father who art not in heaven." Simon's name is not
hallowed in his own house. He is in some bar or other,
supplying no daily bread for his children.
Joyce continued to play games with the Pater Noster
in Finnegans Wake. Book 1 chapter 5 opens with an
invocation of a female deity:
"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the
Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime
sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!" And a
parody by Senan Molony, reproduced here, shows that all of us
can keep worshiping in this church.
