Child bit by a bellows
Child bit by a bellows
In Brief
Figure of speech. Outside the newspaper offices,
Bloom hears a newsboy screaming out an announcement: "Terrible
tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!" Joyce here
repeats an Irish newspaper article's fanciful example of the
absurdly sensational headlines occasionally concocted by
newsboys. He also makes use, here and elsewhere, of the
rhetorical device called anticlimax, a sudden descent
from serious, important words to comically insignificant ones.
Read More
Anticlimax always denotes a decline from some kind of high point to something relatively inconsequential (Greek anti- = opposite + klimax = ladder, so "down the ladder"), but it is most commonly associated with actions. In rhetorical theory, however, the term refers to a sudden shift from high to low language. In his webpage on the device, Richard Nordquist (thoughtco.com/what-is-anticlimax-rhetoric-1689102) offers many examples of its potential for comic deflation.Robert Seidman notes that the trope is used when Myles Crawford insists that a good newspaper article should "Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy." Naming a sports reporter after invoking the Holy Trinity, Seidman observes, "instead of heightening the effect that has been building up, suddenly lowers it or makes it ludicrous." He also affirms Stuart Gilbert's observation that following "Terrible tragedy" with the story of "A child bit by a bellows!" is anticlimactic.
In a JJON essay, John Simpson quotes from a 16 January 1908 article about Dublin newsboys in the Irish Independent in which the writer notes that the typical newsboy does not trumpet stories in the papers he is selling. "Sometimes, however, in a fit of wild exuberance he manufactures such startling imaginary news that even the yellowest of yellow journals would hesitate before owning it." The writer offers two examples: "Could anything be more sensational than 'Horrible accident in Rathmines - Child bit by a bellows', or 'Shocking railway accident - Train runs into a station'?" Joyce apparently held on to the first example and found an opportunity to use it in his newspaper chapter. In Circe the sensationally hyped language returns, but now anticlimax is followed by hyperbolic exaggeration as a chorus of newsboys yells, "Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist."
