"I am, I am big altoogooder"

(357.17-359.20)  After confessing his relations with the two young women (or was he just talking about pictures in the book he's been reading?), HCE turns introspective.  He talks of "idylly turmbing over the loose looves leaflets" of the book while sitting on the toilet and contemplating himself "wiz my naked I."  In doing so, he gets the notion that "I am cadging hapsnots as at murmurrandoms of distend renations from ficsimilar phases or dugouts in the behindscenes of our earthwork."  In other words, HCE gets the sense that what he's reading in the book, and what he's living in his own life, are repetitions or foreshadows of what has come and what will be.  In other other words, this means that he has a sense of his place in Finnegans Wake.

This is a very dense and rich passage of the book, one that I can't really fully unpack at this point in this endeavor.  Regardless, star this particular section as one that might be a key to the Wake.  HCE goes on to say that the noise made by his children (the "loudest reports from my threespawn bottery parts") lets him know that, by virtue of the act of procreation, he has "remassmed me, my travellingself, as from Magellanic clouds, after my contractual expenditures, through the peroffices of merelimb."  As a father, he has ensured his immortality, or at least his reincarnation.  In this, he says, "I, my good grief, I am, I am big altoogooder."  He is bigger than himself, and he is better than himself.

With this, HCE completes (or at least comes to a temporary stopping point in) the story of the Norwegian Captain, which he began early in this chapter (and which I started reading a couple of months ago . . . wow, I've gotten really slow at this reading Finnegans Wake thing).  The captain arrives on the beach with his family to loud applause from the populace.  They live happily ever after (or "winxed and wanxed like baillybeacons") until "we woksed up oldermen."

The final paragraph of today's reading consists of the people "disassembling and taking him apart," like a kind of reverse-Humpty Dumpty.  The people here could be either the people of Ireland or the patrons of the pub (or both), and the "him" here could be either the Norwegian Captain or HCE (or both).  This taking apart consists of (as McHugh notes) analyzing which of six heretical beliefs the Captain/HCE have dabbled in.  These beliefs all, fittingly enough, deal with various analyses of humankind's means of salvation following Adam's fall.  At the moment, it's unclear to me where this fits in with the chapter.  I may not get an answer quite soon, because it looks like next up is another radio interruption.