What is your interpretation of The Parable of the Plums?

>>9672075
I think it's just Stephen being an asshole as usual and deliberately telling a shaggy dog story. The same way as that stupid riddle he asks the classroom earlier about the fox, which clearly no one could answer with the information given and which barely makes sense.

>They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:
—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.
—O, ask me, sir.
—A hard one, sir.
—This is the riddle, Stephen said:
>The cock crew,
>The sky was blue:
>The bells in heaven
>Were striking eleven.
>‘Tis time for this poor soul
>To go to heaven.
>What is that?
—What, sir?
—Again, sir. We didn’t hear.
>Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:
—What is it, sir? We give it up.
>Stephen, his throat itching, answered:
—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.
>He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay.

Also the allusion to Moses's sight of the Promised Land (which he could not actually attain) probably has some important meaning, since Bloom is supposed to be Moses, and in this very chapter there's a melodramatic speech read comparing the dispossessed Irish ruled cruelly by the British to the Jews escaping Egypt. Ireland is the Promised Land and Bloom is Moses overseeing it on Mount Pisgah, just like the ladies overlook Dublin from the top of Nelson's Pillar. The fact that Bloom/Moses can see the Promised Land but not possess it is probably a cruel/lewd Joycean joke about how Bloom is being cuckolded by Blazes Boylan and serves as a cuckold figure, just like Moses is almost cuckolded by seeing but not being able to cross over into the Promised Land, although told his descendants will possess it, and, finally, perhaps a meta-joke about how we, as readers, get to watch the parable itself from a privileged viewpoint but not understand (cross over) into it, or have a satisfying ending of actually "inhabiting" it.

dunno, very dull book most of the time

i know that its referenced again in the shakespeare episode so that may be a clue but aside from that i have no idea

>>9672155
>after all that analysis
>"very dull book"

>>9672075
"I dreamt a watermelon"

>>9674039
Yeah, that part made me laugh. Writing up an analysis on just one passage that has a ton of depth, as all of Ulysses does, and then calling it dull is just so absurd.

>>9674042
good point