Right. Right.

At the beginning of Calypso, an odd verbal mannerism accompanies Bloom's concern for perfectly arranging his wife's breakfast plate: "Another slice of bread and butter : three, four : right. She didn't like her plate full. Right." At the beginning of Hades (in all printed texts but Gabler's) a similar, and rhyming, repetition presents his need to make sure that the carriage door is securely latched: "He pulled the door to after him and slammed it tight till it shut tight." The need to make sure that the plate is right and the door tight suggests insecurity on Bloom's part––fittingly, given his relationship to his wife and to the men in the carriage. A psychologist might speculate that he suffers from a touch of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

John Hunt 2015

Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal, in a lithograph by Georg Engelbach. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Wilhelm Griesinger, in a lithograph by Georg Engelbach. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Detail from first page of Hades in the Rosenbach manuscript. Source: John Hunt.