MDDM Ch. 8 Mangoes

[jbor]

lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:

> I don't read this as simple blasphemy. Certainly in one sense his
> mocking the Host reminds us of Buck Mulligan at the opening of Joyce's
> Ulysses--a blasphemous parody of the Roman Catholic
> sacrifice/sacrament/rite. I read this as an offering. And Easter one.
> It's heretical surely and blasphemous to Mason.

I think it's more to do with characterising Wicks as somewhat of an
irritating nitwit at this point. As Michel pointed out it's as if there are
three reverends, the older man in the parlour earning his keep by amusing
the kids but relishing his role as raconteur even so, the young gossipy
buffoon he was at the time of the tales, and the brooding pessimist revealed
in the journals. 

There's a fourth reverend as well I think, that heroic renegade who was
posting anonymous accounts of "Crimes [...] committed by the Stronger
against the Weaker" (9) back in England, telling truth to power as it were.
But of the four this is the only one that I envisage as Wicks's attempt at
self-characterisation within the text.

best