All of us

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The "fine old custom" that Simon Dedalus notes approvingly in Hades was to lead a funeral cortège through the center of town so that even people not attending the ceremony in the cemetery could pay their respects to the departed, lifting their hats in greeting. As for the ceremony, Slote observes that "In Ireland it is customary to attend the funerals of even passing acquaintances." He quotes from an article by Donal McCarthy, "The Funeral Service II," Furrow 8 (1957): "The attendance of our people at funerals is second only to their attendance at Mass; they love what they call a 'fine funeral'. Reasons social as much as religious compel them to attend" (657). But, according to Pat Jalland's Death in the Victorian Family (1996), "Women did not usually attend upper- and middle-class funerals in the early and mid-Victorian periods, on the grounds that allegedly they could not control their feelings" (221). Slote observes that in Ireland this "custom was still practised through to the early twentieth century."

Bloom's status of being only marginally included is suggested at the outset of the chapter: "— Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom." The language here is certainly interesting. Perhaps Cunningham does not know, or has momentarily forgotten, that Bloom will be making up the fourth in the carriage. Perhaps he knows it and his question is a rhetorical one designed to hurry Bloom along. Perhaps he is simply slighting him by addressing him in the way one would address a pet dog. Whatever the explanation, his verbal delivery leaves a distinct and disquieting impression that Bloom is an afterthought in his mental tally. For probably the first time, readers of the novel realize that Bloom is tolerated but not fully accepted by many of his fellow Dubliners.

As the cramped carriage begins rolling along, the other three men call each other "Martin," "Simon," and, much later in the chapter, "Jack." It turns out that such informality pervades the chapter: it has its John and John Henry, its Ned and Corny, Tom and Paddy, Ben and Blazes. Bloom remains Bloom throughout, in a clear act of linguistic distancing that evidently he deals with every day. Near the end of the chapter Joe Hynes, who is taking down names for mention in the newspaper—he works for the same newspaper as Bloom, and owes him money—has to ask, "What is your christian name? I'm not sure." Bloom answers "Leopold." (Eumaeus will reveal that Hynes nonetheless manages to misspell his surname.) Bloom then fulfills the promise that he made in Lotus Eaters to have M'Coy's name fraudulently inserted into the article ("Thanks, old man. I’d go if I possibly could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do"). Although M'Coy is always referred to in the novel by his last name, Hynes nods in response, "Charley."

The reference to Bloom's "christian name" is particularly telling. It is insensitive of Hynes, since Bloom is Jewish or at least commonly assumed to be so. But in another way it is appropriate, since Bloom's Hungarian Jewish father changed his family name along with his religion in order to assimilate into Irish society. That ambiguity—is Bloom one of us, or one of them?—pervades the scene in which Martin, Jack, and Simon feel free to sneer at the supposedly Jewish Dodd in the company of the supposedly Jewish Bloom. Cunningham's "We have all been there" implies that it is wrong for Jews to have more money than Christians and for Christians to have to pay back what they have borrowed from them. His "Well, nearly all of us" implies that Bloom, who has been made an honorary Christian by being included in the conversation, still is tainted by his kinship with a despicable moneylender.

Bloom pathetically attempts to ingratiate himself with this obviously prejudiced company by telling them a humiliating story about Dodd's son being fished out of the Liffey. His narration is disrespectfully hijacked by Cunningham, who finishes telling the story himself, at one point brushing off Bloom's effort to regain the floor. Instead of sulking, Bloom encourages applause for the story that has been stolen from him: "Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly." This poignant episode in the carriage suggests that even when Jews attempt to play the game they still cannot win.

In Further Recollections of James Joyce (1955), Frank Budgen recalls being struck by, and hearing Joyce confirm, Bloom's "loneliness as a Jew who finds no warmth of fellowship either among Jews or Gentiles." Bloom has left the one community for the other, only to find no real community there. In his introduction to Hades written for James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays, Robert Martin Adams observes that during the funeral cortège Bloom "acts the part of an outsider, a latecomer, a half-rejected and scarcely tolerated hanger-on" (97). At the heart of this episode, he says, "there is a great hollow resonance. And that is the real development of this chapter, the sounding of that resonance, the deepening and darkening in Bloom's mind of an immense emptiness" (96-97).

Details in many other chapters make clear that the experience of being slighted by Irish Catholics is a common one for Bloom. On his first trip into the outside world, in Calypso, he spots some unnamed man who does not respond to his salutation: "There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore." Bloom has no particular interest in the man, he compensates for the snub by dismissing his importance, and it is possible that the man truly hasn't noticed him, but this brief encounter creates the impression of an outsider who barely registers on others' radar screens. Hades highlights the sense of cultural difference that underlies this neglect, and subsequent chapters demonstrate it again and again: the rude exclusion from male professional community in Aeolus, the behind-the-back gossiping in Lestrygonians and Scylla and Charybdis, and so on. Circe shows that these unending exclusions exact a heavy psychological toll—but malign neglect is better than outright antisemitic violence, as Cyclops demonstrates.

Despite the pain of his exclusion, Bloom does find freedom in not being bound by the mental chains of a tight social group. In Hades he advances practical suggestions for funeral trams that offend others' sense of decorum, appreciates easy deaths that violate their religious beliefs, finds human sympathy for suicides that they would exclude from the spiritual community, inwardly laughs when they are twisting their faces into somberness, faces the meaninglessness of extinction without having to ingest soteriological pablum. James Joyce found his calling by embracing an ethos of "silence, exile, and cunning." Bloom appears to be traveling a similar path.