Figure of speech. When William Brayden passes
through the office in which Bloom is talking to Red Murray,
the narrative says that his back, rather than he, climbed a
staircase: "The broadcloth back ascended each step: back."
Theorists of rhetoric and poetry call this kind of figurative
speech synecdoche: using a part to represent the
whole, or vice versa.
Synecdoche
(sih-NEK-duh-kee, from Greek
syn- = with +
ex-
= from, out of +
dekhesthai = to take, take up) means
"to take up with or from something else"––i.e., to use one thing
to convey the sense of another. That etymology links it with
metaphor,
in which one thing stands for something not normally associated
with it. It is even more closely related to
metonymy:
in both figures no discovery of resemblance is implied, just a
preexisting experiential connection that hearers can readily
consult to translate one term into another. Thus people say
"wheels" to mean a car, "head" for cattle, "hired hands" for
workers, "silverware" for all kinds of cutlery, "ivories" for
piano keys, "the bottle" for drinking, "a good ear" for musical
ability, and "Bandaid" for adhesive bandages in general.
Somewhat less frequently, a whole can refer to a part, as when
"the law" means policemen, "going to the movies" means going to
see a film, "speak truth to power" means taking on powerful
people, and "Boston won last night" means "the Red Sox won."
When the editor of the Freeman's Journal enters the
scene in Aeolus, a headline identifies him properly as
"WILLIAM BRAYDEN, ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS,
SANDYMOUNT." The
narrative, however, presents him as a passing collection of
body parts: "The broadcloth back ascended each step: back.
All his brains are in the nape of his neck,
Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat
folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck. / — Don't you
think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray
whispered.... rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs.
Hand on his heart." Only the first sentence can
properly be said to employ synecdoche, but the spirit of
reducing something to its parts animates the entire passage,
and it seems possible that Joyce deliberately added to his
father's joke about Brayden's brains dwelling in the fat folds
of his neck another small joke about the rhetorical device he
was employing: it is sy-neck-doche.
