Puke like Christians

Puke like christians

Dent adopts a polemical tone in response to Gifford, saying that, "On the contrary, 'puke' means 'puke' and 'christian' is...'a human being as distinguished from one of the lower animals'" (76). But it is not clear that Gifford is using either word in a different sense. The only real difference in his reading is that rats drink manfully (i.e., to the point of vomiting) rather than simply suffering as people do when they drink to excess (i.e., by vomiting). Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner, however, do take "christian" in a different sense––not as a synonym for "human being" but as an antonym for "Jewish." Dublin's Jews, they note, tended to scorn the Dublin culture of excessive drinking, as in a street rhyme quoted in Dermot Keogh's Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland:

"Two pennies, two pennies," the Christian did shout
For a bottle of porter or Guinness's stout;
My wife's got no shawl and my kids have no shoes,
But I must have my money, I must have my booze.

This accords with Bloom's wary avoidance of alcohol throughout the day. Only in Lestrygonians does he allow himself any drink, and it is a single chaste glass of burgundy rather than rounds of stout. But the Slote commentary sheds no light on the central, puzzling detail in the sentence it glosses: why think of rats puking like Christians? Dent's discovery of a similar sentence in a 19th century novel suggests that Bloom may be repeating an indigenous Irish adage about animals vomiting just like humans. If so, then religious antipathy may play no part in his thinking.

But even if Bloom is recalling a common saying, it is entirely possible that it reminds him of the distasteful habits of "christians." Kiberd, for one, hears an "understandable animus" in the word. Associating Christians with rats, a widely reviled urban animal, would be consistent with such a view, and Bloom's thoughts about the stuff that they pour down their throats every day magnify the disgust. Awe at the "wonderful" size of Guinness's vats gives way to thoughts of rats floating in those vats "Dead drunk on the porter." Whether the rats are literally dead, "bloated as big as a collie" and decomposing in the brew, or only dead drunk and vomiting into it ("again" and again?), the fantasy engenders aversion to the black stuff that Gentiles are so fond of: "Imagine drinking that!" Like so many other features of civilized life, this drink has a dark underside: "Well, of course, if we knew all the things."