In this chapter, Bloom explores a dream state in which amalgams of his diurnal experiences appear to him. He doubts himself, as Hamlet did, in the beginning of the chapter, wishing he hadn’t bought the crubeen and the trotter.
He hallucinates, pictures an ex-girlfriend/Gerty, and imagines a fictional Gulliver’s Travels-like city in which he has ultimate control of the subjects.
If *Hamlet* has been described by a certain Russian emigre writer as the paranoid dream of a neurotic scholar, this chapter is Bloom’s paranoid dream.
Hamlet returns from Wittenberg, finds that the people around whom he came of age are inadequate and wonders if he may be an amalgam of their inadequacies. When he kills them, he attempts to eliminate the influences of their solipsisms on his life and free himself.
What is Bloom doing here? He, like Hamlet, is looking on the figures who influence him and imagining a world in which he has control-- in which he is not an amalgam of his early life experiences, can act freely--
Are we amalgams of our early experiences? If we are, can we learn to understand ourselves better by studying our subconscious desires, with their origins? How could we do so? And could we benefit from the study?
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