Puffing and Blowing; the citizen, Reduced

Post Five

Don’t know about you but the citizen struck me as a large powerful chap with not only a stroppy mouth but the muscle to back it up. Perhaps such view was influenced by the man largely regarded as the character’s inspiration, Michael Cusack. He was a champion shot-putter, broad and musclebound if not over tall. Then there’s the parodist’s description of the ‘figure seated on the large boulder’ and we would be forgiven for expecting a gigantic dangerous rogue, prone to violence and of whom Bloom should rightly be scared. He certainly talks a good game.

But Joyce through Gilbert tells us that the episode technic is Gigantism so we are wary of reality being artificially inflated for effect.

It’s therefore a surprise but not a huge one to hear our narrator describe the citizen chasing after Bloom…”getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy..” not to mention Gerty MacDowell adding further grist to this mill next episode.

We may need to recalibrate our view of the citizen.

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