In Lestrygonians Bloom starts walking near the newspaper offices where Aeolus was set and ends up at a point near the National Library where Scylla and Charybdis will take place. In keeping with Joyce's fancy that these tightly bounded urban streets resemble the alimentary canal, his thoughts relentlessly circle back to food. At first he proceeds due south: across the river, up the short length of Westmoreland Street to College Green, and into Grafton Street. This north-south trunk lies at the heart of Dublin. No kilometer of city streets is more central, more familiar to tourists, more bustling, more packed with large buildings, more steeped in historical memories. This note follows Bloom halfway through the chapter to a point that could be said to conclude the first half of his walk, and, it could be said more speculatively, halfway down the trunk of the body.

Lestrygonians starts with Bloom standing in front of "Graham Lemon's," the Lemon & Co. confectioner's shop at 49 O'Connell (Sackville) Street Lower. After meditating on candy he walks toward the river reading a "throwaway" that has been thrust into his hand, past "Butler's monument house corner," which is called George Butler's "monument house, musical instrument warehouse" in Thom's because it is located across from the O'Connell monument at the base of O'Connell Street. (Slote, Mamigonian, and Turner observe that although this business was the last house on the quay, it was not actually on the corner. That honor belonged to 56 Lower O'Connell Street.) Bloom glances down "Bachelor's walk," the quay on which Butler's sits at number 34. At nearby number 25 he sees a famished-looking Dilly Dedalus "there outside Dillon's auctionrooms." In Wandering Rocks Dilly is still standing outside Joseph Dillon's auction business, waiting patiently for her improvident father to appear.

Bloom walks onto the "O'Connell bridge" and sees "a puffball of smoke" rising from a Guinness brewery barge passing underneath. He contemplates the vats of porter, the sewage-laden waters of the Liffey, and the hungry gulls flapping about, buys two cakes to feed the birds, and throws away the throwaway. Having crossed the bridge, he looks up at "the ballastoffice," a five-story building on the corner of Aston's Quay and Westmoreland Street which housed the offices of the Port of Dublin and held a very large and accurate clock on its facade, as well as the large "timeball" on its roof which makes him think of parallax. He waits for a procession of sandwichboard bearers to pass by him in the gutter, and then crosses "Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by."

Walking along the sidewalk on the east side of the street, he encounters Mrs. Breen and holds a long conversation with her. As they talk, "Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from Harrison's." This business at 29 Westmoreland Street is listed as a "confectioner's" in Thom's, like Lemon's, but it seems to be a restaurant dedicated to baking and cooking rather than candies. Bloom watches a street urchin breathing in the rich aromas coming from its sidewalk grate to quell his hunger pangs. Saying goodbye to Josie and moving on, he goes by "the Irish Times" at number 31 and thinks of the ads for a lady typist he has placed there.

At "Fleet street crossing," the midpoint of Westmoreland Street, he thinks about where he should have lunch—Rowe's? the Burton?—and then walks on "past Bolton's Westmoreland house," a spirit grocer at numbers 35-36. Soon he is at the end of Westmoreland Street, where the imposing neoclassical building built to house the Irish Parliament, and now owned by the Bank of Ireland, begins its majestic semicircular wrap around the north side of College Green: "Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons flew." Bloom thinks about pigeons voiding their bowels on pedestrians: "Their little frolic after meals."

Then his attention is drawn in the opposite direction as "A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching Indian file." This street, which comes around the northwest edge of Trinity College and joins Westmoreland street from Bloom's left, held a police station and also the M'Caughey Restaurant at numbers 3-4. The men's contented, "Foodheated faces" tell Bloom that they have just finished lunch, and he watches as "They split up into groups and scattered, saluting towards their beats. Let out to graze." At the same time, "A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup." These policemen are marching northeast rather than southwest, clearly comprising the next lunch shift.

Crossing College Street, Bloom walks "under Tommy Moore's roguish finger." This freestanding bronze statue of Irish poet Thomas Moore, funded by public subscription, was erected in 1857 on a granite base in a traffic island in the middle of the street. Bloom thinks, "They did right to put him up over a urinal." He is next seen walking where the second group of policemen had been, by the iron railings that separate Trinity College's "surly front" from College Green. This extremely busy intersection no longer has anything green about it: "Trams passed one another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging." Bloom contemplates the sheer numbers of human beings packed into cities like sardines and concludes, "This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed."

A few steps more and he is passing the "Provost's house," a large and imposing stone pile that stands on the southwestern corner of the campus. Bloom thinks, "The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me." Slote and his collaborators point out that the Reverend George Salmon, D.D., Regius professor of divinity, was indeed the Provost of Trinity College in 1904, but only until his death on January 22. They cite Eric Partridge as authority that "tinned" can mean wealthy, and point out that Salmon earned over 1,000 pounds a year as Provost. According to the 20 April 1904 Freeman's Journal, at his death he left an estate valued at £27,200. Tinned salmon, indeed. This reflection, and the surly grandeur of the house, provide more grist for Bloom's existential nausea.

Looking to the right across the first block of Grafton Street, he sees sunlight glinting from "the silverware opposite in Walter Sexton's window." Walter Sexton was listed in Thom's as a "goldsmith, jeweller, silversmith, and watchmaker" at 118 Grafton Street. Bloom contemplates John Howard Parnell passing by the shop window, and then he becomes aware of George Russell passing him on the east side of the street and thinks of his vegetarianism. Crossing at the "Nassau street corner," he stands in front of the Yeates and Son optical shop on the south side of Nassau Street and looks back at the roof of the Parliament building, testing his vision and thinking disconsolately of astronomy.

From this point, almost exactly halfway through the chapter, the character of the cityscape changes subtly but distinctly. Bloom enters Grafton Street proper, bounded on both sides by fancy shops. Grand monumental displays are left behind and commerce prevails. There are more restaurants and pubs, more businesses in which he is personally interested, and a more confusing warren of streets. Bloom follows a much less direct path as his feet take him south, then east, then briefly back to the west, then east again, then south, then east, and, finally and abruptly, south to the entrance of the National Museum. Given Joyce's gastrointestinal conceit, one may wonder whether the relatively straight shot that he has taken from O'Connell Street to Grafton Street, passing through the busy churning of College Green, is meant to correspond to the relatively straight line from mouth to duodenum via the stomach. If so, then the much curvier walk that follows should be imagined as intestinal.

Such a reading may be thought overly ingenious (I do not know if anyone has suggested it before)  but the schemas show that Joyce was thinking of "peristaltic" movement through the alimentary canal, and there can be little doubt about where he saw that motion concluding: after Lestrygonians ends, Bloom goes into the National Museum to see whether the statue of a Greek goddess possesses an anus. (Buck Mulligan reports this detail in Scylla.) Once a reader realizes that Bloom's feet trace question marks in Lotus Eaters, anything seems possible.

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John Hunt 2025