Walked soberly
In Brief
"Mr Bloom walked soberly": the first sentence of Lotus Eaters insinuates two kinds of reference to Homer's Odyssey. Bloom, the novel's Odysseus, has left his home (the analogue of Calypso's caves) and begun a wandering journey that will contain many adventures. And he walks "soberly," in contrast to the various kinds of intoxication that the chapter analogizes to the condition of Odysseus' men when they eat the flowers of the lotus plant.
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In Book 9 of Homer's poem, Odysseus tells King Alcinous of having come "to the coastline of the Lotos Eaters, / who live upon that flower" (85-86). He sent three of his men out to discover who lived there, and the inhabitants offered them some of the plant to eat. The men "never cared to report, nor to return: / they longed to stay forever, browsing on / that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland" (95-97). Odysseus drove them back, "wailing," to the ships and tied them under the rowing benches, exhorting their companions not "to lose your hope of home."
Joyce's chapter glances at a host of intoxicants, addictions, obsessions, palliations, and cures: tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, opium, the lotus itself, pharmaceutical drugs, food, mesmerizing religious rituals, confession and penance, patriotism, racetrack betting, warm climates, a warm bath, allurements of sight, sound, and smell, sexual longing, voyeurism, flirtation, masturbation, freedom from sex. Explicitly or implicitly, all of these stimulants and depressants offer release from the pain of life, and the pain of Bloom's life is very clearly connected with home.
Bloom resembles both Odysseus and his men in this chapter. He walks soberly past many allurements, but he is tempted by others, and he does not want to think deeply about what is happening in his home. As Hugh Kenner writes in Ulysses (1987), "In a state of near-nescience, Bloom is wandering almost at random, thinking of everything but the main thing he found out an hour before, that Boylan will cuckold him this afternoon. This he must not dwell on."
