Ulysses

Study Guide by Course Hero

Ulysses uses a mix of past and present tense.

What's Inside
ABOUT THE TITLE
Ulysses is named after Odysseus ("Ulysses" is the Latin version
j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1 of his name), the hero of the Greek epic poem The Odyssey,
attributed to the poet Homer. Homer's epic tells of Odysseus's
d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1 adventures following the Trojan War as he sails home to the
island of Ithaca to rejoin his son, Telemachus, and wife,
a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 3
Penelope. In James Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus and
h Characters .................................................................................................. 4 Leopold Bloom spend the day (and night) of June 16, 1904,
wandering around Dublin before returning to Bloom's home.
k Plot Summary ........................................................................................... 10 The three main characters of Ulysses—Stephen, Bloom, and
Molly, Bloom's wife—parallel The Odyssey's Telemachus,
c Section Summaries ............................................................................... 15
Odysseus, and Penelope. In addition, names traditionally
assigned by Joyce scholars (and Joyce himself) to the
g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 43
episodes align to events in The Odyssey.
l Symbols ..................................................................................................... 45

m Themes ...................................................................................................... 46

b Narrative Styles ..................................................................................... 49

d In Context
e Suggested Reading ............................................................................... 51

Early Invasions of Ireland and

English rule
j Book Basics
England and Ireland have had a long, tempestuous relationship
AUTHOR that continues to modern times. This is the backdrop to James
James Joyce Joyce's Ulysses and permeates the narrative throughout. The
8th century saw the first large-scale raids of Ireland by
YEAR PUBLISHED
Norsemen or Vikings. In the 12th century, England's King Henry
1922
II, at the urging of Pope Adrian IV, invaded Ireland to
GENRE strengthen the position of the Anglo-Norman nobility there.
Fiction Attempts at self-rule by the earldoms of Kildare, Desmond, and
Ormonde and by the Anglo-Irish—the families of Anglo-Norman
PERSPECTIVE AND NARRATOR nobles who had intermarried with the Irish—continued until
Ulysses is told in both third-person and first-person narration. 1541, when the Irish Parliament recognized England's King
Henry VIII as the sovereign of Ireland. This consolidation of
TENSE
English political and economic rule fueled centuries of
Ulysses Study Guide
resistance and struggle for Irish independence, and by the time
Joyce was born it seemed as if the goal might be at last within
reach.
Modern Irish History
The Act of Union, passed in 1801, was an attempt to quell Irish
discontent and entrench English rule. The Irish Parliament was
abolished, and Ireland was represented in the Parliament of the
United Kingdom in Westminster, England. Over the course of
the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution and the Great
Famine drastically changed the face of Ireland. The famine
(1845–49), also called the Irish Potato Famine and the Great
Hunger, came about after the island's staple crop, potatoes,
developed a blight that destroyed the plants. The British
reaction was inadequate, and landlords evicted their starving
tenants. Poor rural farmers either died, went to work in the
cities, or left Ireland altogether. Emigration continued after the
end of the famine, and by 1911 the population of Ireland was
half what it had been before the famine.
Meanwhile, Irish resentment against England grew into
rebellion. In the 1870s and 1880s a more open movement for
Home Rule—Irish control of Ireland—began. However, this
effort suffered a major defeat when its leader, Charles Stewart
Parnell, was ruined by an adultery scandal, an event that left a
lasting impression on the young James Joyce. The
parliamentary route to home rule remained stymied for
decades, and on Easter Monday 1916, the Irish Republican
Brotherhood openly rebelled and declared a provisional Irish
government. After a week of street fighting, the leaders were
forced to surrender. The Government of Ireland Act of 1920
split Ireland in two: six northern counties would become
Northern Ireland, and the other 26 counties would become the
Irish Free State. However, discontent remained high and civil
war soon broke out again. Today, Northern Ireland remains a
part of the United Kingdom.
Irish History in Ulysses
Ulysses was published in 1922; it is set in 1904, before the
establishment of the Irish Free State. Ulysses reflects many of
the passions and frustrations of Irish nationalists. The
character Stephen Dedalus is prickly about English domination.
He resents the condescension of the Englishman Haines, who
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In Context 2
speaks Gaelic (the language championed by Irish nationalists)
and treats Stephen as a font of native Irish witticisms. Stephen
is also critical of Haines's fatuous way of shrugging off English
responsibility: "We ... in England ... have treated you rather
unfairly," he says, but then adds, "It seems history is to blame."
However, Ulysses also presents a critical portrait of Irish
nationalists in the seething, demented, anti-Semitic "citizen" of
the "Cyclops" episode. The style of the "Cyclops" episode also
sends up Irish mythology and thus promotes a skeptical view
of contemporary Irish nationalism. Ulysses has much to say
about Irish history and politics, but it refuses to offer any
simple, straightforward perspective on them.
Modernism and Ulysses
Modernism was a late 19th- and early 20th-century movement
in many arts, including music, painting, sculpture, architecture,
and literature. It especially flourished after World War I,
predominantly in Europe and North America, though there was
also a modernismo movement in Latin American literature.
Modernism rejected the styles and forms of the past and
sought to invent new ones, featuring characteristics such as
a focus on innovation and science as it changed the future
and illuminated the past that combined with a growing
skepticism regarding its potentially dangerous power;
an experimentation with accepted styles of art that yielded
revolutionary new techniques such as stream-of-
consciousness writing;
an interest in psychology; and
an interest in urban living and other forms of experimental
art such as jazz music.
Joyce is considered one of the central authors of the
movement, along with T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf,
and W.H. Auden. Mirroring the apparatus of footnotes in T.S.
Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land, Joyce attempted to fulfill
the modernist tenet to make the old new by circulating to his
friends a dense and complicated "schemata" for Ulysses,
detailing each episode's Homeric parallels as well as its central
art, color, and so on. Ulysses also makes a mockery of
traditional popular fiction. For example, the character Bloom
times his defecation with the climax of a short story he reads
called "Matcham's Masterstroke." Stephen parodies the
pleasures of a dramatic fictional climax when he thinks to
himself, "I have often thought ... that small act ... determined the
whole aftercourse of both our lives."
Ulysses Study Guide Author Biography 3

Of Ulysses, T.S. Eliot wrote, "It is a book to which we are all

indebted and from which none of us can escape." Ulysses is a a Author Biography
monument of modernist literary invention. Joyce explores the
consciousnesses of an ordinary man and woman as well as
that of an educated, artistic young man. None of the three are
heroic, however, and a climactic plot is avoided in favor of a
Family and Education
meandering development. The novel eschews the dramatic
James Joyce was born in Rathgar, outside of Dublin, on
resolution of conventional narratives for an ending that relies
February 2, 1882. He was the oldest of John and May Joyce's
on hints, possibilities, and suggestions.
10 children to survive infancy. The family was not wealthy and
descended further into poverty throughout his childhood as his
father squandered his earnings and drank heavily. When Joyce
Stream of Consciousness was six years old, he attended Clongowes Wood College, a
prestigious Jesuit boarding school in County Kildare, but he
Ulysses is sometimes seen as the modernist masterpiece of a
had to leave in 1891 when his parents could no longer afford
literary technique called stream of consciousness. Stream of
his tuition. He spent two years schooling himself at home
consciousness represents a character's thoughts and sense
before he and his brother Stanislaus were admitted, tuition-
impressions without using quotation marks or tags such as he
free, to Belvedere College, a Jesuit school, in 1893. Joyce was
thought to himself. The technique can include interior
a good student and in 1899 entered University College in
monologue, in which a character narrates thoughts to himself
Dublin, where he studied modern languages and Latin. He
or herself. In the "Calypso" episode, for instance, Bloom thinks
completed his BA in 1902. Joyce departed for Paris to attend
to himself, "Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry." The narrator
medical school but quickly discovered he lacked the
does not say, "Bloom thought to himself, 'I'll have a cup of tea
qualifications and instead worked a series of jobs, including
soon; that's good, because my mouth is dry.'"
teaching and banking. He returned to Ireland in 1903 when his
mother became sick.
Stream of consciousness, however, goes beyond an interior
monologue of thoughts alone. It can include sensory
impressions, such as Stephen's on the beach: "A point, live dog,
grew into sight running across the sweep of sand." Nor is Early Work
Ulysses limited to stream of consciousness as a narrative
technique. Its later episodes branch out into increasingly May Joyce died in August 1903, and Joyce refused to take part
radical experiments in style. One episode imitates a musical in the Catholic sacraments associated with death, having
fugue; several passages are formatted as play scripts; and the abandoned his faith some years before. In June 1904 he met
"Wandering Rocks" and "Oxen of the Sun" episodes run Nora Barnacle, who quickly became his lifelong partner. On
through numerous styles, from translated medieval Latin prose principle he rejected the institution of marriage, but he married
to modern slang. The novel also parodies many styles from Nora in 1931 to secure his children's inheritance. Joyce
English literary history. continued to work on his writing after three of his short stories
were published in the August, September, and December 1904
issues of Irish Homestead magazine. In 1905 Joyce and

Treatment of Episodes Barnacle moved to Trieste in northern Italy, where their two
children were born. They also lived briefly in Rome, but the
onset of World War I forced the family to move to Zurich,
Ulysses was initially published without chapter numbers or
Switzerland. After the war Joyce's friend Ezra Pound, the
chapter titles. The 18 chapters (called "episodes") still appear
American expatriate poet, convinced Joyce to move to Paris,
without titles in newer editions. However, Joyce named the
where the family lived for 20 years.
episodes after people and events in Homer's Odyssey and sent
this information to his friends. This study guide uses those
Joyce made four trips to Ireland after 1904 but did not return
episode titles and follows Joyce's division of the book into
after 1912. Despite his self-imposed exile, Joyce's work strives
three parts: Telemachiad, Odyssey, and Nostos.
to capture the texture of Irish society and culture. The short

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Ulysses Study Guide Characters 4

stories in Dubliners (1914) provide a series of portraits of that immortality."

city and its inhabitants, while his first novel, A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man (1914–15), is a semiautobiographical
account of his own beginnings. Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses is
the main character of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Publication and Reception of
Ulysses
Joyce began writing Ulysses, also set in Dublin, in 1914. From
1918 to 1920 he published installments of his work-in-progress
in a New York literary magazine, The Little Review. Joyce
published roughly half of Ulysses in this way. But Bloom's
masturbation scene in the "Nausicaa" episode resulted in an
obscenity conviction for the magazine's publishers. Several
plans to publish the complete Ulysses in the United Kingdom
collapsed; its typographic complexity and dubious legal future
discouraged publishers. The book could not be published in the
United States because of the obscenity conviction.
In 1922 Joyce's friend Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Paris
bookstore Shakespeare and Company, published Ulysses in
France. Initially printed in a run of only 1,000 copies, Ulysses
was soon being smuggled into England and the United States.
In 1933 a U.S. district court in New York ruled that Ulysses was
not obscene and had literary merit and that Joyce was a "great
artist." The trials and surrounding publicity influenced the
reception of Ulysses, which came to stand for the fight of
artistic freedom against censorship.
Later Work and Death
With this success Joyce was financially secure as a writer and
devoted himself to the massive project of writing his next book,
which incorporated poetic styles, allusions, and more than 40
languages. With the help of Paul Léon, another expatriate in
Paris, Joyce published his final work, Finnegans Wake, in 1939.
Léon would also help preserve Joyce's manuscripts and other
personal effects when the Joyce family fled Paris in 1940
ahead of the Nazi invasion. Under political asylum, Joyce
settled again in Zurich, where he died of a perforated ulcer on
January 13, 1941.
h Characters
Bloom
Bloom is a seller of newspaper ads and an impresario or
conductor for a singing tour that includes his wife and her
lover, a role that encapsulates Bloom: schemer and cuckold.
Bloom's head is full of utopian visions and inventions; he also
delights in everyday sensual pleasures, like breakfast and
baths. He is Jewish, although he does not practice Judaism.

Early reviews of Ulysses were evenhanded, praising the book's

Molly
genius while slipping in a few complaints. Edmund Wilson
Born on the island of Gibraltar, Molly Bloom is the daughter of
wrote in the New Republic in 1922 that it had "appalling
an Irish officer, Major Tweedy, and a woman of
longueurs" (boring passages), but nonetheless "Ulysses is a
Gibraltarian/Spanish descent. Molly often yields to her
work of high genius." The reviewer Joseph Collins in the New
impulses for kisses and/or sex, but she is far from the cruel
York Times claimed "the average intelligent reader" would get
mistress of Bloom's imaginings in the "Circe" episode. The
"little or nothing" from Ulysses except "bewilderment and a
ocean-like flow of her desire sometimes pains Bloom, but it is
sense of disgust." Even so, Collins wrote, "Ulysses is the most
also her strength. Ulysses culminates in Molly's interior
important contribution that has been made to fictional
monologue, a flood of unrestrained thought.
literature in the twentieth century. It will immortalize its author."
Collins also presciently suggested Ulysses should come with "a
key and a glossary." In fact, Ulysses has prompted the
publication of many such guidebooks. As Joyce himself said to Stephen
his French translator, "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles
that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over Stephen chafes against authority: his father, the Catholic

what I meant, and that's the only way of ensuring one's Church, the English. He is impoverished and ambitious. He

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Ulysses Study Guide Characters 5

studied medicine and also wants to be a writer, although at age

22 his talents are still untried. A lingering guilt over his mother's
death is balanced by a strong desire to escape the clutches of
his miserable family.

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Ulysses Study Guide Characters 6

Character Map

Stephen
Intellectual, self-absorbed
college graduate

Father
Father figure

Bloom Molly
Simon Dedalus
Kindly, scientifically Housewife with a talent
Scornful, hard-drinking man Spouses
minded ad salesman for singing

Lovers

Blazes Boylan
Roguish, flirtatious man

Main Character

Other Major Character

Minor Character

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Ulysses Study Guide Characters 7

Full Character List Rudy Bloom

The only son of Leopold Bloom, Rudy
died at 11 days.

Character Description Edy is one of the young women Bloom

sees on the beach at Sandymount.
Edy Boardman
Cissy Caffrey thinks Edy is jealous of
Kindhearted, optimistic, 38-​year-​old
her.
Bloom Leopold Bloom dotes on his wife,
Molly, although she is having an affair.
Breen suffers from mental illness and
thinks people are out to get him. He
Sensual, sexy, and a talented singer, Denis Breen
exhausts his wife with schemes for
33-​year-​old Molly Bloom is somewhat getting even.
Molly
baffled by her doting and slightly
perverted husband.
Josie is a former flame of Bloom's and
Josie Breen now the long-​suffering wife of the
Educated, imaginative, and poetic,
mentally ill Denis Breen.
Stephen Stephen Dedalus has literary
ambitions and resists authority.
Blazes Boylan is a red-​headed rogue
Blazes Boylan of great sexual prowess who has an
An actual historical figure, the Irish
affair with Molly.
poet George Russell (pseudonym:
A.E.
"A.E.") expounds a vision of a national
renewal through art and culture. A defiant and carefree young woman,
Cissy Caffrey Cissy asks Bloom for the time on the
beach.
Almidano Stephen's voice teacher, Artifoni
Artifoni praises Stephen's singing.
Jacky is a lively four-​year-​old boy and
Jacky Caffrey the brother of Cissy Caffrey; his twin
The wife of a judge, Mrs. Barry tries to
is Tommy Caffrey.
Mrs. Yelverton have Bloom arrested in the "Circe"
Barry episode because Bloom once wrote
her an erotic letter. The twin brother of Jacky, four-​year-
Tommy Caffrey old Tommy is impudent toward his
sister Cissy in the "Nausicaa" episode.
The author of a story Bloom reads in
Philip Beaufoy the outhouse, Beaufoy accuses Bloom
of plagiarism in the "Circe" episode. Nurse Callan tries to keep the drunk,
unruly party of medical students in line
Nurse Callan
at the maternity hospital in the "Oxen
An actual historical figure, Best was
of the Sun" episode.
assistant director of the National
Richard Best Library in Dublin. Best joins the
conversation about Hamlet, quoting a A British solider who takes offense at
French poem that mentions him. Stephen's remarks in the "Circe"
Private Carr
episode, Carr punches Stephen,
knocking him to the floor.
Born Ellen Higgins, she was the wife
of Rudolph Bloom and mother of
Ellen Bloom
Leopold Bloom. She appears in the The citizen is a cranky, irascible Irish
"Circe" episode praying for her son. nationalist and anti-​Semite who claims
The citizen
to work for the cause of Irish freedom
but mainly drinks and reminisces.
Milly is an adventurous, kind,
somewhat frivolous 15-​year-​old girl
Milly Bloom who left Dublin for the summer to Martha carries on a secret romantic
work for a photographer. She is the Martha Clifford
correspondence with Bloom.
daughter of Leopold and Molly Bloom.

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Ulysses Study Guide
Bella is the cruel and domineering
madam of a brothel in Nighttown, the
Bella Cohen
name Ulysses gives to Dublin's red-
light district.
A British soldier who takes offense at
Private
Stephen, Private Compton eggs on
Compton
Private Carr, a fellow soldier.
A complacent, self-​satisfied Jesuit
Father John priest, Father Conmee walks through
Conmee Dublin in the "Wandering Rocks"
episode.
A friend of Simon Dedalus's, Cowley is
a priest who seems to have lost his
Father Bob
calling, although he is not a
Cowley
"defrocked" priest who has left or
been excommunicated.
A friend of Stephen's from their
school days, Cranly was also a
Cranly
character in A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man.
Crawford is the editor of the
Myles Crawford Freeman's Journal newspaper where
Bloom tries to place an ad.
Alone among the group in the carriage
going to Dignam's funeral, Martin
Martin Cunningham is kind to Bloom. He also
Cunningham spearheads the escape from Barney
Kiernan's pub, thereby rescuing
Bloom.
Stephen's employer at the Dalkey
Mr. Deasy School, Mr. Deasy is a pompous and
anti-​Semitic Anglo-​Irishman.
One of Stephen's younger sisters,
Boody is oppressed by their father,
Boody Dedalus
Simon, but she is also quietly
rebellious.
One of Stephen's younger sisters who
is completely under the thumb of their
father, Dilly also wants to escape the
Dilly Dedalus Dedalus household and pursue
education as Stephen has done. She
buys herself a book of French
grammar.
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Characters 8
One of Stephen's younger sisters,
Maggy Dedalus Maggy cooks and cleans for the
siblings.
A religious woman, May is saddened
by her son Stephen's lack of religion.
May Goulding
She dies of cancer before the start of
Dedalus
Ulysses and sometimes appears to
Stephen as a ghost.
Sharp-​witted, hard-​drinking, and
careless with money, Stephen's father
Simon Dedalus
has ambitions for his son and looks
down on his wife's family.
Mrs. Dignam is the widow of Paddy
Mrs. Dignam Dignam and mother of the young
Patrick Dignam.
Patrick Dignam Patrick is the son of the late Paddy
Jr. Dignam and still a young schoolboy.
Paddy Dignam is mourned at the
Patrick "Paddy" graveside ceremony in the "Hades"
Dignam episode. He leaves behind a wife and
son.
Ben Dollard is a stocky-​chested
singer with a low voice. Molly
Ben Dollard
incorrectly but aptly calls him "a base
barrel-​tone" singer.
Doran is on a once-​a-​year drinking
binge the day the novel takes place.
Bob Doran He drinks in Barney Kiernan's pub and
talks sentimentally about the
deceased Paddy Dignam.
A barmaid at the Ormond Hotel, Lydia
Lydia Douce appears in the "Sirens" and
"Wandering Rocks" episodes.
An actual historical figure, Eglinton
was a Dublin literary critic and
John Eglinton essayist. He is part of the company of
writers assembled in the library in the
"Scylla and Charybdis" episode.
Cashel Boyle
O'Connor Farrell is a mentally ill man who tries
Fitzmaurice to avoid walking near lampposts.
Tisdall Farrell
Ulysses Study Guide
Flynn is an acquaintance of Bloom's
Nosey Flynn
who drinks at Davy Byrne's pub.
Lieutenant A former lover of Molly's, Gardner
Gardner died in the Boer War in South Africa.
A slovenly, lazy lawyer, Richie is
Richie Goulding
Stephen's uncle on his mother's side.
Stephen's aunt, Sara is married to
Sara Goulding
Richie Goulding.
Walter Walter is the awkward, "skeweyed"
Goulding son of Richie and Sara Goulding.
A condescending Englishman who
speaks Gaelic and studies Irish
culture, Haines is a friend of Buck
Haines
Mulligan. He stays in the tower, and
his noisy nightmares drive Stephen
away.
A prostitute at Bella Cohen's brothel,
Zoe Higgins
Zoe reads Stephen's palm.
Hynes is a barfly and friend of the
Joe Hynes
narrator in the "Cyclops" episode.
Kelleher works at the undertaker's
Corny Kelleher
and sings at funerals.
A barmaid at the Ormond Hotel with
Mina Kennedy whom Boylan flirts, Mina is friends
with Lydia Douce.
Barney Kiernan owns the pub in which
Barney Kiernan
the "Cyclops" episode is set.
Lambert is a mourner at Dignam's
Ned Lambert funeral and a jury member at Bloom's
trial.
Along with Boylan, Lenehan bets on
Lenehan the favorite, Sceptre, in the Gold Cup
horse race.
One of the joking, drinking medical
students in "Oxen of the Sun," Lynch
Vincent Lynch
goes with Stephen to the brothel in
"Circe."
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Characters 9
An enthusiastic bettor, Lyons
Bantam Lyons mistakenly thinks Bloom gives him a
tip for the Gold Cup horse race.
An actual historical figure, Lyster was
the head librarian of the National
Thomas W.
Library in Dublin. He is the "Quaker
Lyster
librarian" who takes part in the
Shakespeare discussion.
Professor MacHugh is part of the
Professor
group in the newspaper office in
MacHugh
"Aeolous."
An unknown mourner at Dignam's
funeral, the man in the mackintosh is
The man in the
mistakenly identified as M'Intosh and
macintosh
listed that way in the newspaper
account of Dignam's funeral.
M'Coy is a coroner's assistant who
M'Coy asks Bloom to put him on the list of
attendees at Dignam's funeral.
A slightly vain and self-​regarding
Gerty young woman, Gerty tries to make up
MacDowell for a perceived imperfection in her
looks by dreaming of romantic love.
John Henry Menton is a stiff-​necked lawyer who
Menton appears to dislike Bloom.
Malachi "Buck" Mulligan is a joking,
overbearing medical student who lives
Buck Mulligan with Stephen in Martello Tower. He is
based on a friend of Joyce's, Oliver St.
John Gogerty.
Murphy is a middle-​aged man who
tells tall tales at the cabman's shelter
W.B. Murphy
in the "Eumaeus" episode. He might
have served time in jail.
An actual historical figure, Nannetti is
an Italian-​Irish politician and
City Councillor
newspaperman who meets with
Nannetti
Bloom about placing an ad in the
"Aeolous" episode.
Narrator in The anonymous narrator dislikes most
"Cyclops" people. He despises the patriotic
episode citizen and Bloom the peacemaker.
Ulysses Study Guide
A lawyer who likes a drink, O'Molloy
J.J. O'Molloy defends Bloom during his hallucinated
trial in the "Circe" episode.
O'Rourke owns a pub near Bloom's
Larry O'Rourke
house.
Power airs his opinions about suicide
in the carriage on the way to Paddy
Jack Power Dignam's funeral, inadvertently
slighting Bloom, whose father killed
himself.
Mrs. Mina Purefoy is in labor for three
days before she delivers a son. Bloom
Mina Purefoy goes to the maternity hospital to
check on her in the "Oxen of the Son"
episode.
Tom Rochford invents something like
Tom Rochford an abacus that shows whose turn it is
to be onstage in a music hall show.
An awkward and not very bright pupil,
Cyril Sargent Sargent prompts Stephen to think
about mothers' love.
The blind stripling is a young man who
The blind works as a piano tuner. He appears in
stripling several episodes, tapping his way
through the street.
Mrs. Mervyn Talboys complains at
Mrs. Mervyn
Bloom's trial that he sent her erotic
Talboys
photographs.
A Hungarian Jew who later changed
his name to Bloom, Rudolph Virag was
Rudolph Virag
Bloom's father. He committed suicide
by poison in 1886.
k Plot Summary
Ulysses begins on Thursday, June 16, 1904, in Dublin, Ireland,
and ends sometime after 2 a.m. on Friday, June 17, in the
Blooms' house at 7 Eccles Street. The action begins at 8 a.m.,
just outside central Dublin in a Martello Tower, a coastal
fortification dating to the Napoleonic wars. Stephen Dedalus is
in mourning for his mother, May, whose death more than a year
before had brought him home from Paris. Stephen eats
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Plot Summary 10
breakfast with his housemate Buck Mulligan and Buck's guest,
the Englishman Haines. Stephen dislikes Haines and resolves
to spend the night elsewhere. Stephen leaves the tower to
teach a class at a boys' school in Dalkey, a suburb of Dublin.
He receives his monthly wage from the overbearing Mr. Deasy,
who gives him a letter about hoof-and-mouth disease. Stephen
promises to try to get the letter published. He then walks along
the shore at Sandymount, philosophizing, urinating, and picking
his nose. He thinks about his mother and feels guilty for not
having prayed with her at her deathbed.
With the beginning of the novel's fourth episode, the narrative
turns back to 8 a.m. that same day in a different household.
Leopold Bloom, who sells ads for a living, is making tea for his
wife, Molly, in their house on Eccles Street. Molly is a
housewife and a talented singer who grew up on the island of
Gibraltar, which was a British outpost. Bloom brings Molly tea
and cooks a kidney for his own breakfast. He brings in the mail
and notices a letter that he suspects is from Molly's lover,
Blazes Boylan. After breakfast Bloom goes to the outhouse,
where he reads a melodramatic story and then tears off a page
to use as toilet paper.
Bloom then leaves the house and stops by a post office, where
he picks up a letter addressed to him under the pseudonym
"Henry Flower." It is a flirtatious letter from a secret
correspondent, Martha. Bloom takes a bath at a bathhouse and
then attends the funeral of Paddy Dignam, an acquaintance. He
rides to the cemetery in a carriage with several men, including
Stephen's father, Simon Dedalus, who make anti-Semitic
remarks in the presence of Bloom, a nonpracticing Jew. Bloom
was not close to Dignam, but he spends time thinking about
death: he recalls his own father, who committed suicide, and
his son, Rudy, who died in infancy.
At noon Bloom tries to sell an ad at the newspaper offices.
Stephen is also there, getting Mr. Deasy's letter published.
Stephen is well liked by the newspapermen; Bloom is not.
Bloom leaves without succeeding in placing his ad. Stephen
goes for drinks with the newspapermen.
At 1 p.m. Bloom eats lunch at Davy Byrne's pub. At 2 p.m.
Stephen is at the National Library telling the librarian, the poet
A.E., and others his theories about the play Hamlet. The
roundabout discussion emphasizes the theme of fathers and
sons; Stephen is estranged from his scornful father. At 4 p.m.
Blazes Boylan is scheduled to visit Molly, ostensibly to practice
singing, and Bloom spends the time looking for his friend
Ulysses Study Guide Plot Summary 11

Martin Cunningham. He wants to talk to him about Dignam's

life insurance. Bloom is concerned about helping Mrs. Dignam
get the money she needs. At Barney Kiernan's pub Bloom
encounters a bigoted man known as the "citizen." The citizen is
a fanatical Irish nationalist and an anti-Semite. Martin
Cunningham hustles Bloom outside before there is an
altercation. From outside the pub Bloom shouts his comeback:
he tells the citizen that Jesus and God are Jewish.

At 8 p.m. Bloom is at Sandymount Strand, where Stephen had

walked that morning, sitting on a rock. He sees an attractive
young woman, Gerty McDowell. She notices he is looking at
her. Bloom notices his watch stopped at 4:30 and wonders if
that is the exact moment of Boylan's and Molly's coitus. Gerty
shows off her legs and her underwear to Bloom, who
masturbates discreetly as he watches her.

At 10 p.m. Bloom goes to the maternity hospital to visit Mrs.

Purefoy, who has been in labor for three days. Stephen is there
with Buck Mulligan and other young men. They drink and talk
while Mrs. Purefoy gives birth. Then they go to a bar and get
drunk. Around midnight Stephen and his friend Lynch go to
"Nighttown" to visit a prostitute; Bloom follows them. Both
Stephen and Bloom encounter their personal demons in the
brothel and undergo cathartic experiences. Stephen offends
some British soldiers; Bloom smooths things over and they
escape. They rest in a cabman's shelter for carriage drivers
and other late-night wanderers and then go to Bloom's house.
Stephen drinks cocoa in the kitchen but declines to stay the
night. Molly narrates the final episode, reflecting on love,
marriage, and her life with Bloom.

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Ulysses Study Guide Plot Summary 12

Plot Diagram

Climax

7
Falling Action
6
Rising Action
5 8

4
9
3
Resolution
2
1

Introduction

7. Bloom and Stephen have drunk, hallucinatory experiences.

Introduction

1. Stephen resolves not to sleep at Martello Tower.

Falling Action

8. Bloom and Stephen go to Bloom's house.

Rising Action

2. Stephen philosophizes on the beach.

Resolution
3. Bloom goes to Dignam's funeral with Stephen's father.
9. Molly thinks about Boylan and Bloom.
4. Stephen talks about Hamlet, fathers, and sons.

5. Blazes Boylan visits Molly.

6. Bloom stands up to the "citizen."

Climax

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Ulysses Study Guide Plot Summary 13

Timeline of Events

June 16, 1904, 8 a.m.

Stephen resolves not to sleep at Martello Tower.

Same day, 8 a.m.

Bloom eats breakfast.

10 a.m.

Stephen teaches a class and gets paid.

10 a.m.

Bloom reads a secret erotic letter.

11 a.m.

Stephen philosophizes on the beach.

11 a.m.

Bloom attends Dignam's funeral.

Noon

Bloom tries to sell an ad; Stephen tells a story.

1 p.m.

Bloom eats lunch.

2 p.m.

Stephen theorizes about Hamlet.

4 p.m.

Blazes Boylan visits Molly.

5 p.m.

Bloom encounters "the citizen," the Irish nationalist and

anti-Semite.

8 p.m.

Bloom is attracted to Gerty.

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Ulysses Study Guide Plot Summary 14

10 p.m.

Bloom and Stephen meet at the maternity hospital.

Midnight

Bloom and Stephen encounter ghosts and hallucinations.

June 17, 1904, 1 a.m.

Bloom and Stephen rest in a cabman's shelter.

2 a.m.

Bloom and Stephen go to Bloom's house.

Later that night

Molly thinks about Boylan and Bloom.

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Ulysses Study Guide Section Summaries 15

c Section Summaries Analysis

The first three episodes are called the "Telemachiad," a Greek
word that means "the story of Telemachus." These episodes
Part 1, Episode 1 focus on Stephen Dedalus, who plays a role akin to that of
Odysseus's son, Telemachus, in Homer's Odyssey.

Joyce uses a flexible style of third-person narration in

Summary "Telemachus." Sometimes the narration is omniscient, and
sometimes it is stream of consciousness. Stream of
The first episode begins at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 16,
consciousness is a style of narration that gets very close to a
1904. The action takes place on the outskirts of Dublin. Buck
character's thoughts and sense impressions. In this episode
Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus talk on the rooftop of a Martello
the stream-of-consciousness narration presents Stephen's
tower, a coastal fort no longer in use for defense. They live
thoughts without quotation marks or the words Stephen
there together. While shaving, Buck mockingly pretends to say
thought. For example, Stephen thinks "agenbite of inwit," but
Mass like a priest. Stephen's thoughts drift to memories of his
the words are not presented as "'Agenbite of inwit,' Stephen
mother, who died a year before following a difficult illness. He
thought to himself." However, the narration is not consistently
recalls seeing his dead mother in a dream. Buck has brought in
limited to Stephen's perspective. It can also be omniscient, all-
a third roommate, Haines, an Englishman. Buck is boisterous
knowing. At the beginning of the episode when the narrator
and talkative on this morning, while Stephen is tired after being
describes "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan," Stephen is not yet on
kept awake by Haines, who had nightmares.
the rooftop, so Buck is not seen from Stephen's perspective.
Buck says he must get Stephen some shirts and handkerchiefs The style of giving only fragments of Stephen's thoughts also
("noserags"). He proposes loaning Stephen a pair of trousers, lends intrigue to his character—his thoughts are alluded to
but Stephen says he can't wear gray because he is in mourning without being fully explained.
for his mother and should wear black. Buck laughs about
When Stephen asks Buck about the day Stephen visited him
Stephen's observing customs so carefully even though he
after his mother's death, Buck claims, "I can't remember
"killed' his mother. (Buck's aunt thinks Stephen killed his
anything. I remember only ideas and sensations." Joyce may be
mother, perhaps by going to Paris. At his mother's deathbed
drawing on the ideas of 18th-century English philosopher David
Stephen refused to kneel and pray with her, which Buck
Hartley, who claimed that memory does not contain records of
jokingly claims did her in.) Stephen compares Buck's cracked
events, only ideas and sensations. Joyce may not have
shaving mirror to "a symbol of Irish art." Buck tells Stephen that
believed Hartley's theory, but when he presents his characters'
Haines wants to collect Stephen's sayings for a book. Stephen
ideas and sensations, their experiences come alive for readers.
reveals Buck insulted him not too long ago; he overheard Buck
For example, Stephen often remembers the basin into which
say, "O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead."
his dying mother vomited. He looks at the green sea and thinks
Buck makes breakfast for himself, Stephen, and Haines. As "Bowl of bitter water," alluding to the basin of green bile. The
they sit down to eat, an old Irish woman drops by to deliver presentation of allusions, fragments, ideas, and sensations is
their milk. Haines the Englishman speaks Gaelic to her, but she compelling in a way that the statement "I remember the event
can't understand him. Discussing history, politics, and religion, of my mother's illness" might not be.
Buck, Stephen, and Haines walk to the shore to swim in the
In Stephen's dream his mother is ghost- or ghoul-like; she
sea. Buck borrows some money from Stephen. Haines calls
wears the winding sheet or "graveclothes" a corpse is buried
himself "a Britisher" and says he does not want his country to
in. In popular lore a ghost appears when the dead person has
be overrun by "German jews" (the novel does not capitalize the
unfinished business or was killed unjustly. Stephen is be
word Jew). Buck asks Stephen to give him the key to the
haunted by guilt and seems on some level to agree with Buck
tower, and Stephen, feeling put out by Buck and Haines,
that he killed his mother. Guilt over his mother's death, or over
resolves to sleep elsewhere that night. Stephen leaves to
his refusal to pray with her, would explain why Stephen thinks,
teach a class at a boys' school.
"Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot." "Agenbite of

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Ulysses Study Guide Section Summaries 16

inwit" is an obsolete phrase for "remorse of conscience." It
contains the word wit, referring to the mind. Stephen also
quotes Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's play Macbeth: "Yet
here's a spot." Lady Macbeth feels guilty over a murder she
urged her husband to commit, so she constantly imagines
blood ("a spot") on her hands.
they do not find themselves reflected there. Joyce was an
ambitious writer. With Ulysses Joyce may have aimed to
surpass "Irish art," the art of an unfree, oppressed people, and
also to surpass both realism and romanticism.

Stephen feels oppressed and constrained by his living

Part 1, Episode 2
situation, and Joyce uses this to mirror Ireland's situation. Buck
is overbearing, and Haines is condescending. When Stephen
picks up Buck's shaving bowl, he recalls carrying incense
Summary
during Mass at his Catholic school and he reflects on the fact
It is ten o'clock in the morning. Stephen is teaching a history
he is in the same position now: "A servant too. A server of a
class at the Dalkey School. The lesson is about a battle fought
servant." As an altar boy he served a servant of God. Now he
by Pyrrhus, a Greek king in the third century BCE. Some of
serves Buck, who is himself somewhat subordinate to the rich
Stephen's students are forgetful and distracted. One
Englishman Haines. There is also dramatic irony in Stephen's
description is "the boy's blank face asked the blank window."
realization of his servitude. In Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as
Another boy makes a joke: "Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier."
a Young Man, a priest declared the devil's sin was that he said,
Stephen's mind is elsewhere too as he continues to think about
"Non serviam," Latin for "I will not serve." Stephen used this
Buck and Haines but also muses about Aristotle and
idea when he declared to his friend Cranly that he would
philosophy.
become an artist: "I will not serve that in which I no longer
believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my
Stephen moves the class on to poetry, having them read aloud
church." Now Stephen is back home in his "fatherland," Ireland,
"Lycidas" by the English poet John Milton. As class ends
mimicking the serving he once did in the church.
Stephen asks his students a riddle and gives them the answer.
After class the students go outside to play hockey. One
Haines is condescending and views Stephen as a curiosity and
student remains behind; the awkward, homely Sargent has
a source of Irish witticisms. Haines also knows how to speak
been assigned extra schoolwork by the headmaster, Mr.
Gaelic, the language advocated by Irish nationalists, unlike
Deasy.
Stephen or the old Irish milkwoman. Stephen expresses the
theme of Irish subjection to England when he remarks on
Mr. Deasy, Stephen's boss, calls Stephen to his office. He is an
Buck's mirror. The mirror has a crack and was borrowed from
Anglo-Irish Protestant who thinks of himself as an Englishman
Buck's maid. Stephen calls it "a symbol of Irish art. The cracked
and claims his Irish ancestors voted for union with England. Mr.
lookingglass of a servant." Art reflects life, like a mirror, and
Deasy pays Stephen his monthly wage and also makes anti-
Irish art, the art of a nation subservient to England, distorts
Semitic remarks and advises Stephen on saving money. He
reality.
gives Stephen a letter he has written about hoof-and-mouth
disease which Stephen promises to try to get published in
Stephen's remark about the cracked mirror is also a response
several newspapers.
to what Buck says. Alluding to a witticism by the Irish writer
Oscar Wilde, Buck says, "The rage of Caliban at not seeing his
face in the mirror." Caliban is the non-European servant to a
European sorcerer in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. Wilde
Analysis
wrote, "The 19th-century dislike of realism is the rage of
James named this section after the character Nestor in The
Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The 19th-century dislike
Odyssey. Nestor is a veteran of the Trojan War whose advice
of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face
is sought by the son of Odysseus, Telemachus. Though he is
in a glass." Wilde meant that unsophisticated people dislike
known as a wise speaker, Nestor is unable to help the young
realism in literature because it reflects them just as they are.
man, who wants to know where his father is. Similarly, this
Romantic literature, in turn, does not necessarily document
episode in the novel explores the role of authority figures who
reality, and so angry, unsophisticated readers dislike it because
should be able to satisfy a younger person's needs but might

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Ulysses Study Guide
not be adequate to the task.
Stephen is sensitive about matters of authority and domination.
When a boy makes a joke and the others laugh, Stephen fears
losing control of the class. He thinks they know he lacks
authority: "aware of my lack of rule." He also thinks they could
become aware of their class differences as he is a poor, part-
time worker and they are privileged children in a private school:
"[aware] of the fees their papas pay." He thinks of Haines
because he's made a joke Haines might want for his
scrapbook. He could bring Haines a quote for his book, but
then he would be "a jester at the court of his master, indulged
and disesteemed." (Disesteemed means "disrespected, held in
low esteem.") Stephen is not eager to play that role.
Stephen also shows his sensitivity to matters of power when
he is sympathetic to the awkward, unattractive boy Sargent,
who seems to have gotten on Mr. Deasy's bad side. The theme
of love returns as Stephen believes Sargent's mother must
have loved her son: "She had loved his watery weak blood
drawn from her own." Stephen here uses the past tense, as
though Sargent's mother was dead like Stephen's.
Stephen's guilt about his mother's death shows up in the riddle.
The point of the riddle seems to be its pointlessness, because
it is impossible to guess the nonsensical answer: "The fox
burying his grandmother under a hollybush." But the riddle's
answer comes back to Stephen a moment later as a guilty
memory. He imagines the "poor soul" of a mother gone to
heaven while below on Earth, "a fox, reek of rapine in his fur ...
listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped, and scraped."
Rapine can mean "robbery or plunder," but it also describes the
activity of predators. The fox is a greedy, criminal hunter.
Perhaps it even preyed on its own grandmother just like
Stephen, who "killed" his own mother.
Mr. Deasy is pompous and also misunderstands Shakespeare.
His comment, "Put money in thy purse," is not advice about
saving but something the villainous Iago says to a fool he is
cheating in the play Othello. Mr. Deasy goes on and on about
the virtues of the English and the vices of the Jews. He tells
Stephen the Jews "sinned against the light." Stephen mildly
asks who has not sinned against the light. When Mr. Deasy
tells his anti-Semitic joke, the scene lingers on his frail, pathetic
figure, cough-laughing and choking on his own phlegm. Joyce
does not seem to agree with Mr. Deasy; a novel that wanted to
pitch anti-Semitism to an imagined anti-Semitic readership
would not portray Mr. Deasy so negatively.
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Section Summaries 17
Stephen has fond memories of reading Aristotle in the library in
Paris. He felt protected there from Paris's "sin." There is
something soaring and poetic about the associations Stephen
creates with Aristotle's idea that "thought is the thought of
thought." For Stephen, a mind reflecting on itself does not lead
to abstraction, but to "tranquil brightness" and "Tranquility,
sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms." However, Stephen's
ideas are not just empty philosophical speculation. He also has
a keen sense of the weight of history, especially compared to
the complacency of Mr. Deasy, to whom Stephen remarks,
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
Part 1, Episode 3
Summary
Stephen walks on the beach at Sandymount, his streams of
thought rambling over time, philosophy, his youthful literary
ambitions, sex, a poem he writes, Irish history, death by
drowning, and his mother's death. He contemplates the world
as a text to be interpreted, recalling a phrase from the 17th-
century German theologian Jakob Boehme: "Signatures of all
things." He also thinks about time, which has been called the
nacheinander, German for "one after another"; and he thinks
about space, the nebeneinander, German for "next to each
other." He considers Christian theology, such as the doctrine
of transubstantiation and remembers visiting his Uncle Richie
and Aunt Sara, but he does not visit them this day. He comes
upon a dead dog and a live dog and imagines seeing corpses
of the drowned, pulled from the sea. He recalls his school days,
his time in Paris where he met the Irishman Kevin Egan, a
nationalist in exile.
Stephen then remembers his ambition, when younger, to write
books with letters for titles. He imagined people would talk
excitedly about them: "Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer
Q. Yes, but W is wonderful." He also recalls excitedly shouting
"Naked women! Naked women!" when he was younger.
He has not changed much in that respect; he looks with desire
and longing at a woman who has pinned up her skirts to walk
on the beach. He aches to be touched and asks himself, "What
is the word known to all men?" (Many readers believe Stephen
is talking about love.) He resolves, again, not to sleep in the
Martello tower that night and writes a darkly romantic poem
Ulysses Study Guide
about the kiss of a vampire lover on a scrap torn from Mr.
Deasy's letter. He wonders if he will be seen and if his writing
will be noticed. Finally, about to end his walk on the beach, he
urinates, picks his nose, and imagines a drowned man fished
out of the sea.
Analysis
The "Proteus" episode is named after a Greek sea god who
was able to change forms. In Homer's Odyssey Proteus
changes into a serpent, a leopard, a pig, a tree, and even water.
(His name is the source of the adjective protean.) The first
words of the episode: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at
least that if no more, thought through my eyes" allude to an
idea from Aristotle that we see the pure form of objects
mediated through the thought processes of our mind but not
the thing or "substance" itself. In this episode Stephen's
thoughts and visual perceptions change rapidly. Looking down
the beach, he sees "a point, live dot" become a bounding dog.
This same dog also becomes a buck and a fox in Stephen's
imaginative vision. Seeing a pair of midwives, Stephen's mind
moves from a miscarried child to its umbilical cord to a long,
wrapped-together series of umbilical cords which become a
telephone line linking Stephen back to Eden. Stephen is aware
of himself as the thinker and perceiver of all these changes:
"My soul walks with me, form of forms." He also realizes that
what he perceives is just the "signature of all things," not the
thing itself.
As befits the shape-shifting sea god, Joyce's language is
particularly protean in this episode. He invents new words.
When Stephen imagines the linked umbilical cords, they are
called "strandentwining." The separate umbilical cords, or
strands, entwine or wrap together. But strand is also a British
word for a beach. Stephen's mystical telephone line links the
shore he stands upon to the Garden of Eden. With the
composite word contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality, Joyce
jams more ideas and meanings into the term consubstantiality.
Stephen is thinking about the Arian heresy in which Arius, a
Christian priest in 3rd-century Constantinople, denied God the
Father was "consubstantial" with the Son, meaning Father and
Son were the same substance. Instead Arius claimed God the
Father was superior to the Son, a doctrine that came to be
known as Arianism.
This heresy has some meaning for Stephen as he meditates on
fathers in this episode. His own father's scornful voice erupts
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Section Summaries 18
as Stephen thinks about his uncle Richie Goulding: "Jesus
wept: and no wonder, by Christ!" Stephen also thinks about the
mention of a drowned father in Shakespeare's play The
Tempest: "Full fathom five thy father lies." These thoughts
about heresies and fathers, sons and mothers, leads Joyce to
invent the comical "contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality" to
emphasize the confusion and contradiction inherent in Catholic
theology. (In its goofiness the word has been compared to that
of the eponymous children's book character Mary Poppins's
invented word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.) Like Stephen,
Joyce uses language in a playful, protean way. His next book,
Finnegans Wake, consists almost entirely of just such invented
words.
Drowning has several meanings for Stephen in this episode: as
a test of heroism, an occasion for mourning, and a mode of
transformation. Stephen thinks of Buck, who has saved men
from drowning. The character of Buck is based on Joyce's
real-life friend and one-time roommate in the Martello tower,
the Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty. Gogarty saved several
men from drowning in Dublin's Liffey River. Buck's heroism
becomes a test for Stephen: "Would you do what he did?" a
group of harsh interrogators seems to ask Stephen. His
answer is less than heroic: "I would want to ... I am not a strong
swimmer. Water cold soft." Stephen imagines the opposite
scenario: not saving the drowned man and instead being pulled
under by him.
Not being able to save the imagined drowning man reminds
Stephen of his mother's death: "I could not save her. Waters:
bitter death: lost." There is blame behind these words; he feels
he should have saved her. His mother also returns in the form
of the riddle about the fox. Watching a dog dig up sand on the
beach, Stephen imagines: "Something he [the dog] buried
there: his grandmother." When Stephen thinks about his own
conception, the image of his mother as a ghoul returns, as
though his father had mated with a ghost: "Wombed in sin
darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with
my voice and my eyes and a ghost-woman with ashes on her
breath." The image of his mother as a ghost has replaced his
other memories of her, a sign his mourning is far from over.
Stephen also considers the way drowning transforms a person.
In a song he recalls from The Tempest, the sprite Ariel sings
about a drowned man who "doth suffer [undergo] a sea-
change." People today use the phrase "sea change" to mean "a
really big change," but in Ariel's song it means a transformation
into something "rich and strange," something bejeweled and
Ulysses Study Guide
valuable: "Of his bones are coral made; / Those are pearls that
were his eyes." Stephen considers a different description of
the imagined drowned man: a "bag of corpsegas sopping in
foul brine." The transformation doesn't end there. Fish eat the
dead, and Stephen eats the fish: "Dead breaths I living breathe,
tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all the dead."
(Urinous means "urine-soaked," and offal is organ meat or the
kind of meat that is sometimes discarded, like kidneys and
liver.) In so far as the imagined drowned man becomes part of
Stephen's soul, that "form of forms," the drowned man really
does become something "rich and strange."
Part 2, Episode 4
Summary
In Part 2, "The Odyssey," the focus widens. The first episodes
were Stephen's, but from here on readers meet many more
characters, many of which relate to and help us get to know
Bloom and Molly as well as Stephen. The narrative begins at 8
a.m., Thursday, June 16, as it does at the beginning of the book.
Leopold Bloom makes breakfast for his wife, Molly, and feeds
the cat. While he waits for the kettle to boil he goes to the
butcher's to buy a kidney for his breakfast and thinks about the
businesses he passes along the way wondering if he could sell
them an ad in the newspaper. Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father,
briefly enters his thoughts.
Bloom returns home and picks up the mail. There is a letter
addressed to "Mrs. Marion Bloom." He brings tea and buttered
bread to Molly who is lying in bed upstairs. She asks about the
meaning of the word metempsychosis, a Greek word for
reincarnation, and then asks him what time the funeral for
Paddy Dignam is. Bloom gives Molly her letter while downstairs
the kidney starts to burn on the stove. He goes downstairs for
his breakfast and reads his letter, which is from their 15-year-
old daughter, Milly. She is in Mullingar, Ireland, working with a
photographer. Milly mentions a "young student," causing Bloom
to wonder if she will become involved with the man. After
eating Bloom goes to the outhouse to relieve himself. While he
does so he reads a story in the newspaper. As he leaves the
outhouse, church bells toll, reminding him of Dignam's funeral.
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Section Summaries 19
Analysis
Joyce named this episode for the character Calypso, a nymph
in The Odyssey who keeps Odysseus on her island for seven
years as he travels home from the Trojan War. This parallels
the focus in the episode on the relationship between Bloom
and Molly, who holds him in her own kind of spell.
In the previous episode Stephen imagined eating "urinous
offal." In this episode Bloom really does eat urinous offal. He
likes mutton kidneys, "which gave to his palate a fine tang of
faintly scented urine." The narration now follows Bloom's
thoughts closely. Unlike Stephen's abstract allusions and
metaphors, Bloom's thoughts often plainly narrate his
experience: "Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry." Bloom is also
an idea man, but his ideas are often silly, utopian, or fantastical
schemes. One is "Good puzzle would be to cross Dublin
without passing a pub" and another is to "Travel round in front
of the sun ... never grow a day older."
Bloom is earthy. He has kidneys "in his mind" this morning and
a potato in his pocket. "Potato I have," he notes as he heads
out the door. The potato reappears several times in Ulysses,
and its symbolism is only explained later, in the "Sirens"
episode. Bloom's mother thought a potato was a "panacea,"
something that cures or protects against all diseases, and
Bloom follows her in this belief. The potato is a fitting symbol of
good luck for the down-to-earth Bloom.
Bloom knows the streets of his neighborhood well. He "avoid[s]
the loose cellarflap of number seventyfive" without stopping to
think about it. As a salesman selling ads in newspapers, he
knows all the local businesses and is aware there is "No use
canvassing [Larry O'Rourke] for an ad." Simon Dedalus,
Stephen's father, makes an appearance in Bloom's thoughts.
He is more playful than the man Stephen knows, but there is
still a note of scorn. In Bloom's opinion Simon "takes him
(O'Rourke) off to a tee," that is, imitates Larry O'Rourke well.
Molly likes to luxuriate and is still asleep as Bloom goes out to
the butcher's. When he returns he brings her breakfast in bed
and the letter for "Mrs. Marion Bloom," which is slightly
scandalous. Properly speaking, she is Mrs. Leopold Bloom. She
says the letter is from Blazes Boylan, with whom she is
practicing for a singing tour. She is also having an affair with
him. But Molly says this with a studied casualness—"O,
Boylan"—and hides the letter under her pillow. Bloom suspects
something, but he has secrets too: a white slip of paper hidden
Ulysses Study Guide
in his hatband. Still Bloom seems very fond of Molly, and he
even has an appreciation for her heaps of petticoats and
"soiled linen."
The episode is full of resonances. When Bloom is eating
breakfast, there are many references to meat and flesh: a
woman he finds attractive in the butcher shop has "moving
hams," and in her letter Milly describes people (perhaps
women) at the fair as "beef to the heels," an expression used in
that area of rural Ireland suggesting the fairgoers are wealthy
and well fed. Then as Bloom heads to the outhouse, mentions
of dung and dirt abound. He thinks of manuring the garden with
hen's "droppings," and he muses on a peculiar theory,
apparently his own, that gloves can be cleaned with dirt: "Dirty
cleans. Ashes too."
In the outhouse sequence Joyce seems to be having fun
mocking popular fiction. A newspaper story by "Mr. Philip
Beaufoy" lasts just long enough for a reader to use the toilet,
and the story "begins and ends morally." The climax of the
story perhaps coincides with Bloom's excretion. He then uses
the newspaper to wipe himself. But Bloom also has literary
ambitions. He imagines writing a story like the one he has just
read. He would sign it "Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom." The insult
from Boylan would thus be repaired in the newspaper byline.
Joyce's mockery perhaps extends to his own novel. Just
before he wipes himself Bloom is struck by the "poetical idea"
of representing the course of a day: "pink, then golden ... then
black. Still, true to life also. Day: then the night." There is
dramatic irony for readers who realize this schema describes
Ulysses.
Part 2, Episode 5
Summary
It is 10 a.m. and Bloom walks to a post office where he picks up
a letter addressed to "Henry Flower," his pseudonym. He sees
an attractive woman seated in a carriage and waits to watch
her stand up so he can catch a glimpse of her undergarments
as she leaves the high carriage. But a man named M'Coy
pesters him and a truck obscures his view. Bloom tells M'Coy
his wife is going on a singing tour. He thinks of the song Molly
mentioned this morning: "Love's Old Sweet Song." M'Coy
makes Bloom promise to mark him down as attending
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Section Summaries 20
Dignam's funeral. He expects to be busy helping the coroner
with "a drowning case at Sandycove." Bloom looks at
advertisements of plays and thinks about his father.
Bloom finds a quiet spot to read his letter, a flirtatious,
coquettish letter from Martha, a woman he's been
corresponding with for a while. Bloom was bold in his last
letter, and Martha threatens to "punish" him. She has sent him
a flower along with the letter. Bloom pockets the letter and
slips into a church where women are receiving communion. He
ponders the Christian religion and wonders if Martha would
meet him at church someday. Next he goes to a chemist's
shop (pharmacy) to have a lotion made for Molly. He buys a
scented soap and as he leaves the store he runs into Bantam
Lyons, who asks to see his newspaper so he can check the
horse race listings. Bloom tries to give Lyons the newspaper
and says he was going to throw it away, but Lyons
misunderstands and thinks Bloom is giving him a tip on the
horse Throwaway running in the Gold Cup race. Bloom walks
to the local baths to bathe before the funeral.
Analysis
Episode 5 is named after an incident in The Odyssey in which
Odysseus's ship is blown to the island of the lotus-eaters. The
people there live on lotus, an intoxicating "food that comes
from a kind of flower." They give some lotus to Odysseus's
men, who love the drunken feeling so much they no longer
want to sail home to Ithaca. Odysseus has to force them back
onto the ship. Similarly, this episode of Ulysses is about
intoxicants.
If kidneys were on Bloom's mind before, now it's ale: "Barrels of
porter bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned
inside." Bloom does not drink this early in the day, but he is
aware of intoxication all around him. A tea store makes him
think of the tropics, and so of "Lethargy. Flowers of idleness."
The soldiers on parade look "half-baked ... hypnotized like." In
church Bloom notices the intoxicating effects of religion: the
Latin language "stupefies" and the miracle of Lourdes offers
"waters of oblivion." Even a cigar is not just a cigar but a
"narcotic." And Bloom himself is a great big intoxicating lotus
flower, from his name (Bloom) to his pseudonym (Henry
Flower) to his own penis as he imagines himself lolling in the
bath, a "limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower."
The male sex organ, its potency and impotence, is a motif of
Ulysses Study Guide
this episode that contributes to the novel's themes of sex and
love. Bloom's "limp father of thousands" is contrasted with
Boylan's sexual vigor. M'Coy, hearing of Molly's singing tour,
asks Bloom "Who's getting it up?" The unspoken answer is:
Blazes Boylan. Some "sluts" in Bloom's memory take up the
refrain in a song: "To keep it up / To keep it up." Bloom also
notices some gelded (castrated) horses: "a stump of black
gutta-percha [rubber] hanging limp between their haunches."
He thinks the horses might be happy anyway, munching on
their food. Church music likewise makes Bloom think of
castrati, boys who were castrated to preserve their high
singing voices. They too might have been happier that way,
thinks Bloom: "Eunuch. One way out of it."
Part 2, Episode 6
Summary
It is nearly 11 a.m. on Thursday. Bloom, Simon Dedalus, Martin
Cunningham, and Mr. Power travel in a carriage to Dignam's
funeral. Along the way, the carriage passes many Dubliners
they know, some going to the funeral as well. The men gossip
about them as they pass. Bloom points out Stephen Dedalus
as the carriage passes him by. Simon Dedalus, Stephen's
father, assumes he is on his way to see Sara and Richie
Goulding, his aunt and uncle, and Simon speaks scornfully of
them. Bloom thinks about his son, Rudy, who died after only 11
days of life. Mr. Power asks Bloom about the singing tour.
Bloom says some very good singers will be going but that he
can't go because he has to go to County Clare "on private
business."
The carriage passes an old Jewish man. Martin Cunningham
and Mr. Power make fun of the man for being "of the tribe of
Reuben." Simon Dedalus curses him. Bloom attempts to tell an
anecdote about a moneylender named Reuben J. Dodd and his
son, but Martin Cunningham interrupts and finishes the story.
Mr. Power and Simon Dedalus talk about suicide, agreeing it is
cowardly and a disgrace. Bloom thinks about the inquest into
his father's death and a letter his father left him. He tells the
others some of his great ideas about running funeral trams
instead of horse-drawn carriages to the cemetery. The men
then discuss a famous case of murder and an accident in
which a corpse fell out of the hearse.
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Section Summaries 21
At the cemetery Martin Cunningham pulls Mr. Power aside to
say, "I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before
Bloom." He whispers Bloom's father committed suicide. The
priest intones Latin prayers, which Bloom tries to translate for
himself. Afterward Simon Dedalus weeps for May, his recently
deceased wife. Some men talk about Bloom's attractive wife,
Molly, and they wonder why she married a Jew.
The burial itself begins. Bloom counts the mourners at the
gravesite: there are 12, making him 13. Then he decides a man
wearing a mackintosh (raincoat) is actually the 13th: "Death's
number." Bloom thinks about all the corpses in the ground. He
mentions the man in the mackintosh while a man named Hynes
is recording the names of the mourners. Bloom continues to
think of inventions: a clock or speaking tube to make sure the
newly buried are really dead and gramophones to remember
the voices of the dead. Bloom sees John Henry Menton, who
long ago took a dislike to him. He points out Menton's hat is
dented, and Menton stiffly thanks him.
Analysis
In The Odyssey Odysseus visits Hades to get advice from the
prophet Tiresias. (Although Hades is today sometimes a
synonym for hell, in ancient Greece it meant only the
underworld or afterworld, not a place of punishment.) In
Dante's Inferno, written in the 14th century, Dante and the epic
poet Virgil speak to Ulysses (Odysseus) in hell. By writing a
"Hades" episode, Joyce is staking a claim: his Ulysses is an
epic for the 20th century, and Bloom is his Odysseus figure.
The connection to epic literature is made explicit. Thinking of
all the dead in the cemetery, Bloom exclaims to himself, "How
many!" This recalls a line from the Inferno that Joyce's
contemporary T.S. Eliot would famously quote in The Waste
Land: "I had not thought death had undone so many."
When Simon Dedalus passes by his son, Stephen, he makes
scornful remarks and does not attempt to address him, but he
does salute Blazes Boylan coming out of a pub. On hearing
Simon speak of Stephen, Bloom immediately thinks of his
deceased infant son, Rudy (named after Bloom's father,
Rudolph). The man without a son, Bloom, and the man without
much of a father, Stephen, seem destined to inhabit a father-
son relationship, a central theme of the novel.
The "Hades" episode reveals Bloom is not much respected by
his acquaintances in Dublin, although how much he feels their
Ulysses Study Guide
exclusion is not clear. Martin Cunningham talks over him during
Bloom's anecdote, and Simon Dedalus adds the punch line and
gets the laugh. At the cemetery Ned Lambert and some others
speak disrespectfully of Molly and the "coon" she married,
Bloom. When John Henry Menton says Molly "had plenty of
game in her" when she was younger, Ned Lambert replies she
still does; neither man thinks Bloom is a good match for such a
woman. Bloom himself seems to collude in the disrespect.
When the men in the carriage make anti-Semitic remarks about
"the tribe of Reuben," he tries to relate an anecdote about the
moneylender Reuben J. Dodd.
Corpses do not rest easy in the "Hades" episode. They burst
out of coffins on the road. They emit gases that burn blue. And
unless they are stabbed in the heart they can keep on
speaking through tubes or telephones or gramophones. The
uneasiness of the corpses reflects the mourners' uneasiness
and their guilt about surviving the death of someone. Bloom
remains loyal to his late father, Rudolph, and visits his grave
yearly. Even the gruff Simon Dedalus sheds tears for his dead
wife, May.
Part 2, Episode 7
Summary
At noon Bloom goes to the combined newspaper offices of the
Weekly Freeman and National Press, the Freeman's Journal and
National Press, and the Evening Telegraph. The episode opens
with an all-caps title like a newspaper headline: "IN THE
HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS." (Hibernia is the
Latin name for Ireland.) Other newspaper headlines appear
throughout the episode. Trams depart for various destinations
from Nelson's pillar, a column and statue in honor of the
English naval hero Lord Nelson. Sacks of mail are loaded for
delivery from the general post office, and barrels are loaded
from Prince's warehouse.
Bloom has Red Murray, one of the newspapermen, cut out an
example of the ad he wants to place for the House of Keyes,
the tea, wine, and liquor business owned by Alexander Keyes.
Bloom will take the ad to the Evening Telegraph. Bloom and
Red watch as the stately figure of the lawyer William Brayden
enters the Freeman's offices. They think he looks like Jesus or
an opera singer.
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Section Summaries 22
Bloom thinks about the printing press machinery and how it
would "smash a man to atoms" if he got caught in it. He
considers Dignam's "machinery" of fermentation is now also
churning away and imagines himself caught in the printing
machinery, having the day's edition printed all over him. Hynes
is at the newspaper office drawing up an obituary for Dignam.
Bloom hints Hynes owes him money, but Hynes ignores him.
Bloom talks to the foreman about Keyes's ad, a design with
crossed keys, and Bloom suggests running a "par" (a
paragraph) to call attention to the ad. The foreman agrees to it
if Keyes will renew the ad for three months. Bloom goes to get
an example of the design from Keyes, stops to watch the
typesetter at work, and then waits in order to visit the Evening
Telegraph office.
In the Evening Telegraph office, Ned Lambert, Professor
MacHugh, and Simon Dedalus are reading and mocking a
pompous speech by Dan Dawson. The newspaperman J.J.
O'Molloy enters, bumping Bloom with the door. Then the
Telegraph editor emerges from his office in a bad mood. Bloom
pauses to make a phone call to Keyes who is away at an
auction, so Bloom goes to meet Keyes there.
MacHugh holds forth on the Roman empire, saying it was not
so grand; the Jews built temples but the Romans built sewers,
he says. Stephen Dedalus enters the office, bringing Mr.
Deasy's letter. Newspaperman Myles Crawford notes "all the
talents" gathered in the office. Mr. O'Madden Burke makes a
cutting remark about Molly being promiscuous: "Dublin's prime
favorite." The editor of the Telegraph asks Stephen to write
something for the newspaper.
The men begin talking about the murders in Phoenix Park in
1882, in which the British chief secretary of Ireland and his
undersecretary were killed. The talk turns to the Invincibles, the
secret Irish nationalist group that claimed responsibility for the
murders. Stephen thinks about the poem he wrote, and J.J.
O'Molloy asks Stephen his opinion of the poet A.E. (George
Russell). MacHugh recalls the best speech he ever heard on
reviving the Irish language: its speaker died without ever
entering the paradise of Irish language revival. Stephen
suggests they adjourn for a drink, and as they walk he tells a
story about two old Irish spinsters who visit Nelson's column.
Bloom runs into Myles Crawford on the street and explains
Keyes's terms: renewal for two months, and the paper will run
a puff piece about his business. Crawford tells Bloom that
Keyes "can kiss my royal Irish arse," then hurries off to catch
up with Stephen and the others.
Ulysses Study Guide
Stephen continues his story. The old women are tired after
climbing the tower. They look down at the rooftops and talk
about landmarks then look up at the statue of Nelson, whom
Stephen calls "the one-handled adulterer." Finally, they are too
tired to look up at Nelson or down at the city or to talk. They
eat plums and spit out the plumstones. Stephen finishes his
story by laughing and suggests two titles for it: "A Pisgah Sight
of Palestine" and "The Parable of the Plums."
Analysis
The "Aeolus" episode is the first major stylistic departure in
Ulysses. Newspaper headlines are scattered through it, and
the narration moves from the rhetoric of Dawson's speech to
the gruff rebuke of "kiss my royal Irish arse." In the section
under the headline "Omnium Gatherum" (a kind of fake Latin
for "all gather"), Crawford notes representatives of all the arts
are gathered there. Likewise all the rhetorical arts are
gathered in the "Aeolus" episode: speechmaking, law, the study
of the classics (by Professor MacHugh), newspaper reporting,
"scare journalism," and, with Bloom, "the gentle art of
advertisement." Even objects speak in this episode: barrels
thump, the printing press says "sllt," and as Bloom notes,
"Everything speaks in its way."
Aeolus is the name of a figure from Greek mythology known as
the ruler of winds. In The Odyssey Aeolus gave Odysseus the
winds in a bag to help him sail home to Ithaca. But Odysseus's
men open the bag, letting the winds loose and blowing them
off course. Thus Joyce's "Aeolus" episode is also an episode of
winds: the speaker who dies before the Irish revival is "Gone
with the wind"; Keyes wants his business promoted with "a little
puff"; and Bloom considers the way reporters change jobs:
"those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a
new opening. Weathercocks."
What is Joyce's point in gathering up all these arts of rhetoric
and using all these wind metaphors? There is a gigantism in
Joyce's vision of the modern epic; if he can gather all other
rhetorical arts within his novel, then Ulysses becomes a
masterwork, a compendium of literature. At the same time,
Joyce diminishes the drama on the level of plot. He fills pages
with the chatting voices and thumping machines of modern
urban life. Another way Joyce tones down the drama is by
having Stephen mock the melodramatic kind of story Bloom
read that morning, "Matcham's Masterstroke." Watching a man
light a match, Stephen thinks to himself in the voice of the
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Section Summaries 23
narrator of just such a story: "I have often thought ... that small
act ... determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives."
There is no life-altering encounter of Odysseus (Bloom) and
Telemachus (Stephen) in this episode. They don't come in
contact with each other, like the Irish speaker who dies before
entering "the land of promise."
The theme of a narrowly missed happiness is taken up in
Stephen's story, "A Pisgah Sight of Palestine." Moses led the
Israelites out of captivity in Egypt, but he died before they
reached the promised land. In Deuteronomy 34 it is said God
granted Moses a view of Palestine from the top of Mount
Pisgah. The two women in Stephen's story have a "Pisgah
sight" of Dublin—they look down on a faraway Dublin, but they
are trapped in a monument to an English hero and cannot take
part in Dublin's life at ground level. They also fail to arrive at a
free Ireland, which does not yet exist in 1904.
Part 2, Episode 8
Summary
On the way to lunch at 1 p.m. Bloom walks past a candy store
where a boy gives him a religious handbill, a "throwaway"
announcing the coming of the Jewish prophet, Elijah. Bloom
sees one of Simon Dedalus's daughters, Dilly, on the street, her
clothes in tatters. He thinks about how a family falls apart when
the mother dies and about the irrationality of Catholic customs
as he sees them: "Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear
such an idea?"
Bloom watches the gulls and a barge full of porter ale while
making up a rhyming couplet. Gulls searching for food entice
him to crumple up the Elijah throwaway and throw it into the
Liffey River. The gulls do not give chase. He thinks about
Shakespeare's blank (unrhymed) verse and the flow of
language and thought that do not require rhyme to make an
impact. He contrives innovations, such as advertising cures for
sexually transmitted diseases in men's restrooms. He wonders
about the concept of parallax, in which an object appears to
shift its position when viewed from two different sight lines, but
he doesn't spend much time on this. He then thinks of Molly's
peculiar mispronunciation when she said a certain singer is a
"barrel-toned bass," which suits the man, who is stocky and
barrel chested.
Ulysses Study Guide
Bloom runs into Mrs. Breen. Her husband, Denis Breen, is
mentally ill. He has nightmares and obsesses over a postcard
someone sent him with only the letters u.p. as a message.
Bloom suspects Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding is Denis Breen's
tormentor. He points out to Mrs. Breen another mentally ill
person making his way down the street: Cashel Boyle
O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, who tries to avoid walking
near lampposts. Mrs. Breen tells Bloom about a friend of theirs,
Mina Purefoy, who is in the maternity hospital ("lying-in
hospital"); she has been trying to deliver for three days. Bloom
wonders what it's like to try to push a too-large baby out of
your own body. He thinks it should be made easier: "They
ought to invent something to stop that."
Bloom thinks about Charles Parnell, the Irish nationalist
politician, but his thoughts soon return to food. Thinking about
landlords and the rich he remarks: "Swindle in it somewhere."
He sees Charles Parnell's less famous, less interesting brother,
John Howard Parnell, and considers what a coincidence it is to
see the one after thinking of the other. He also sees the poet
A.E. (pseudonym for the actual Irish revivalist poet George
Russell) accompanied by a woman who might be Lizzie Twigg,
an actual Irish poet and Gaelic revivalist. He thinks back to the
early years of his marriage to Molly and wonders if he was
happier then: "Or was that I? Or am I now I?"
Bloom is hungry and also experiences sexual desire as a
hunger: "With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to
adore." He goes to the Burton restaurant but is overcome by
disgust watching people eat, so he goes to Davy Byrne's pub
instead. Nosey Flynn makes conversation with Bloom and asks
about Molly's singing tour. Nosey asks the same question
about the tour—"Who's getting it up?"—providing an
unwelcome reminder of Blazes Boylan, Molly's lover. Bloom
eats a cheese sandwich and drinks a glass of wine.
Bloom wonders who ate the first oyster. He thinks of statues of
goddesses and of the human body having to eat and excrete,
"like stoking an engine." When Bloom leaves the bar for the
restroom, Nosey Flynn and Davy Byrne talk about him. Nosey
says Bloom is a member of the Freemasons, a secret society
that gives him advantages in business. Bloom returns and
wonders who first distilled whiskey. He thinks about the opera
Don Giovanni and about how much money he's made. When he
leaves the pub he sees a young blind man, the "blind stripling,"
who accepts his help crossing the street. Bloom thinks about
the experience of blindness, how blind people sense objects,
and what their dreams are like. He tries not to think of his wife,
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Section Summaries 24
Molly, and her lover, Boylan Blazes. He checks his pockets,
looking for the soap he bought: "Trousers. Potato. Purse.
Where?"
Analysis
This episode is named for The Odyssey's Lestrygonians, a
tribe of giant cannibals. It continually returns to the themes of
eating and appetite, especially in relation to pleasure and
disgust. Tastes and smells beckon to Bloom and also repel
him. The lunch he chooses combines pleasure and disgust in a
"feety"-smelling cheese. But the "Lestrygonians" episode also
contains other, very different contents. Distracted by hunger,
Bloom's mind wanders even as he physically wanders through
Dublin. When Stephen wandered on the beach, he was alone
with his thoughts. The few people who appeared were a great
distance away, and Stephen imagined things about them.
Bloom's wanderings are social. He confronts crowds and
suffering and madness. Bloom can also imagine his way into
other lives through empathy, what it's like to give birth, to have
to nurse a new baby every year, to be blind. His imagination
also works at larger scales as he imagines all the dying and all
those being born.
In the "Proteus" episode in Part 1 of the novel, Stephen thinks
about his soul, the "form of forms." Bloom's imaginings are
flighty and quickly broken off but often about improving the lot
of humankind. After seeing Dilly Dedalus and hearing about
Mina Purefoy, Bloom wonders to himself if it is possible to
alleviate the poverty of children. "They could easily have big
establishments whole thing quite painless," he muses. His train
of thought lurches through a series of calculations and good
practices: "multiply by twenty decimal system encourage
people to put money by." He reaches no conclusion, resolving
to do the math later because he "want[s] to work it out on
paper."
Bloom is not shown to be a better man than Stephen, just a
different one. Bloom's castles-in-the-air may even insulate him
from the suffering he sees. Switching between Bloom's and
Stephen's perspectives (among many others), Ulysses gives
readers an in-depth view of Dublin on a June day in 1904.
Bloom tries to explain a principle of shifting
perspectives—parallax—but he can't quite: "Parallax. I never
quite understood what it means."
As with a left and a right eye, Stephen's and Bloom's views are
Ulysses Study Guide
not opposite, they just issue from a different perspective. For
example, they consider the Catholic Church from different
angles. Stephen is a former pupil at a Catholic school and now
determined not to be dominated by the Catholic Church.
Bloom, a Jew, approaches church customs as a curious
outsider, wondering why having many children is so highly
valued. In Catholicism Stephen perceives corrupt power and
doctrinal rigidity while Bloom perceives irrational or strange
practices among believers. When together, Stephen and Bloom
do not engage in a pro-and-con debate about the Church.
Their combined perspectives give the novel's critical portrait of
the church more depth.
Bloom's thought about coincidence also comments on the
structure of Ulysses. "Coming events cast their shadows
before," Bloom thinks. Future events have a kind of echo or
resonance in the present. In the "Lestrygonians" episode
Bloom thinks of a line from Hamlet: "Hamlet, I am thy father's
spirit." In the next episode, "Scylla and Charybdis," Stephen
speaks that same line. By sharing the line, Bloom, the sonless
father, and Stephen, the cast-out son, symbolically undergo
transubstantiation, sharing their spirit and substance. Bloom's
words about "coming events" also mean Ulysses can be viewed
as a structure of repetitions and variations. The point of the
pattern is not to decode it, but to perceive its beauty, the way a
listener hears beautiful patterns of repetition and variation in a
musical composition.
Part 2, Episode 9
Summary
At 2 p.m. Stephen is in the National Library in Dublin. He talks
about literary matters with "the Quaker librarian," Mr. Lyster,
who passes the time speaking about Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship, a book by the poet Goethe. They are joined by
John Eglinton and A.E. (the poet George Russell, called Russell
in this episode). The men have gathered to hear Stephen's
theory about Shakespeare's Hamlet. Russell remarks it does
not matter who Hamlet is modeled on. Instead, "art has to
reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences." Stephen thinks
about the ideas and personalities of the theosophy movement,
to which Russell belongs. Richard Best, a library assistant, joins
the conversation and quotes a prose poem in French about
Hamlet by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé.
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Section Summaries 25
Stephen starts his meandering discourse on Shakespeare and
Hamlet by asking what a ghost is. He points out a person can
fade into ghostliness "through death, through absence, through
change of manners." As he gives himself reminders about how
to make a good speech, he describes Shakespeare playing the
ghost of King Hamlet. Shakespeare spoke to his dead son
Hamnet, Stephen says, by playing a dead king speaking to his
living son, Hamlet. Russell says a writer's biography should not
be part of the interpretation. They argue the point with respect
to Shakespeare's wife and philosophers' wives, then Russell
leaves to keep an appointment.
Lyster asks Stephen if he thinks Shakespeare's wife was
unfaithful. Stephen thinks so. Eglinton says he believes
"Shakespeare is Hamlet," while Stephen speaks about the
persistence of our identities and the changing of our bodies.
He notices the others are speaking about love and thinks,
"Love, yes. Word known to all men."
Stephen points out King Hamlet was killed in his sleep, but his
ghost knows how he died. In becoming a ghost, Stephen says,
King Hamlet is "consubstantial" with Hamlet his son. From the
doorway Buck Mulligan calls out "Amen!"
The library attendant announces a "gentleman" has come to
the library to see old issues of the Kilkenny People newspaper.
This is Bloom, tracking down a copy of the Keyes ad. Buck
refers to him as "the sheeny" and "Ikey Moses," then says
Bloom knows Stephen's father. Eglinton says they want to hear
more about Shakespeare's wife. They had thought of her only
as "a Penelope stay-at-home."
Stephen says Shakespeare was well off in London, and "his art
... is the art of surfeit." He continues to claim the bard's wife,
Ann, was unfaithful. He mentions Shakespeare's sonnets have
a spurned lover for their speaker and talks about the "mystical
estate" of paternity—a mother's giving birth is verifiable, but
fathering can only be attested to or lied about. He speaks of an
essential hostility between fathers and sons: "his [a son's]
growth is his father's decline ... youth his father's envy, his
friend his father's enemy."
Several pages of the episode unfold as a play script. Stephen
and the others discuss the importance of names in
Shakespeare. Stephen thinks Shakespeare's brothers
influenced his plays for there is always the "theme of the false
or the usurping or the adulterous brother." Eglinton suggests a
compromise between himself and Stephen—Shakespeare is
the ghost and the son. Stephen tells Eglinton he does not
Ulysses Study Guide
believe his own theory and thinks about belief and unbelief.
Mulligan invites Stephen to have a drink. Stephen thinks of
Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell using the
library to look up big words and then considers the question of
whether Hamlet was mad. Meanwhile Buck Mulligan makes up
a poem about masturbation. On their way out of the library,
Bloom passes them and Buck Mulligan greets him.
Analysis
Joyce named the episode for Scylla, a monster with six heads,
and Charybdis, a whirlpool, in The Odyssey. Both pose nautical
dangers to Odysseus and the men on his ship. The parallel is to
the dualities with which Stephen struggles as he tries to
explain Hamlet.
In this episode Joyce puts his Ulysses on a footing with
Shakespeare's works by having his protagonist, Stephen,
comment on Hamlet. As the poet A.E. (George Russell) says
about Goethe, this episode is the comment of "a great poet on
a brother poet." However, the self-seriousness and loftiness of
A.E.'s conversational style is mocked. Joyce might be
comparing his work to Shakespeare's, but he does so in a
joking, playful way. Stephen himself professes not to believe
his own Shakespeare theory.
The conversation in the library is like reading a theoretical
exploration of Ulysses in miniature. Stephen's story ghosts or
copies Hamlet's, and Joyce's story ghosts Shakespeare's. Like
Shakespeare in London, far from his home in Stratford,
Stephen has been in exile from Dublin: "Elizabethan London lay
as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin."
Like Shakespeare playing the ghost of Hamlet, Stephen is
"Made up in the castoff ... of a court buck." (Stephen wears
Buck Mulligan's cast-off clothes and boots.) If Stephen, the
most autobiographical of Ulysses's characters, is Shakespeare,
then Joyce, Stephen's creator, is perhaps "consubstantial" with
Shakespeare. Like paternity, the link between an author and
his or her character is something of a "mystical
estate"—invisible, insubstantial, and always doubtable. All of
this is accompanied by Buck Mulligan's ditty about
masturbation, in case readers take it too seriously.
By having Stephen argue Hamlet is autobiographical, Joyce
shows Ulysses is not completely autobiographical. A reader
might expect Stephen to be Joyce's stand-in. Joyce went to
Clongowes Wood College; so did Stephen. Joyce lived in a
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Section Summaries 26
Martello tower with a friend; so does Stephen. Joyce and
Stephen have in common Paris, distrust of the Catholic
Church, and great literary ambition. But, as in Stephen's theory
about Hamlet, the author Joyce is not just in the son, but in the
ghostly father (Bloom). Stephen's case for reading Hamlet as
Shakespeare's autobiography proves Joyce's Ulysses goes
beyond autobiography. Bloom's preoccupation with his father
and son lends narrative gravity to Stephen's literary theorizing.
While making his speech about Hamlet, Stephen gives himself
this reminder on rhetoric: "Work in all you know. Make them
[your listeners'] accomplices." Joyce's art, as Stephen says of
Shakespeare's, is an "art of surfeit"; Joyce works in all he
knows, and it is a daunting amount. With the tangled web of
allusions, Joyce credits his readers with intelligence. In laying
out such a complex pattern of resonances and repetitions, he
is imagining a reader capable of seeing the charming patterns
in the way Bloom's idle thoughts about Hamlet are cast into
relief by Stephen's tenacious ones. Together, Bloom the
sensual, utopian do-gooder and Stephen the educated exile
embody life in Dublin in all its everydayness and troubled
history.
Part 2, Episode 10
Summary
This episode includes 19 short vignettes of life in Dublin on
June 16, 1904. In the first vignette Father John Conmee, a
Catholic priest of the Jesuit order, walks through Dublin
greeting parishioners. A one-legged sailor asks him for money
and Father Conmee gives him a blessing. He thinks of a statue
of Mrs. M'Guiness and her "queenly" figure, then passes a
Protestant church and considers Protestants' "invincible
ignorance." He sees an advertisement for Eugene Stratton, a
white American minstrel performer who performs in blackface,
and thinks of Peter Claver's mission to Africa and a book called
Le nombre des élus (The number of saved). He thinks of the
Countess of Belvedere, who committed adultery. He then takes
a tram and sees a young man and woman come out of a
hedgerow.
In the second vignette, Corny Kelleher stands in the doorway
of the funeral home. He greets a constable and sees a
"generous white arm" toss a coin out of a window in Eccles
Ulysses Study Guide
Street, the street where Bloom lives. The arm belongs to Molly,
Bloom's wife.
In the third vignette, a one-legged sailor hobbles through the
streets, singing and begging for coins. From her window Molly
Bloom tosses him a coin, which falls on the pavement. One of a
group of ragged boys picks it up and hands it to the sailor.
In the fourth vignette, three of Stephen's young sisters, Katey,
Boody, and Maggy Dedalus, eat soup in their kitchen at home.
Katey and Boody tried to pawn books but with no success.
Boody prays to "Our father who art not in heaven." The
"crumpled throwaway," the handbill about the Jewish prophet
Elijah Bloom tossed away in the "Lestrygonians" episode, is
seen again floating down the Liffey River.
In the fifth vignette, Blazes Boylan has a gift basket of fruit
made up for Molly while he flirts with the shop girl.
In the sixth vignette, Stephen and his voice instructor,
Almidano Artifoni, converse in Italian. Artifoni says Stephen
could have a singing career. He looks into Stephen's eyes and
gives him a warm handshake.
In the seventh vignette, Boylan's secretary, Miss Dunne, types
a letter for Boylan. Five men advertising H.E.L.Y.'s with
sandwich boards walk down the street. Miss Dunne gets a
phone call from Boylan and tells him Lenehan wants to meet
him at the Ormond Hotel at four o'clock.
In the eighth vignette, Ned Lambert shows Reverend Hugh C.
Love his warehouse. The warehouse was the site of St. Mary's
Abbey, "where silken Thomas proclaimed himself a rebel in
1534." (Thomas Fitzgerald rebelled against Henry VIII.) Lambert
calls it "the most historic spot in all Dublin." The reverend
leaves and J.J. O'Molloy joins Lambert.
In the ninth vignette, Tom Rochford shows off a machine that
shows whose turn it is to be onstage in a variety show. He
shows his invention to Nosey Flynn, Lenehan, and M'Coy.
Lenehan and M'Coy leave, and M'Coy runs into Bantam Lyons,
who is betting on the horse he thinks Bloom mentioned to him,
Throwaway. M'Coy and Lenehan see Bloom looking at a
bookstall. A card reappears on the windowsill of the Blooms'
house, 7 Eccles Street, to advertise "unfurnished apartments."
Lenehan recalls sharing a carriage one night with Bloom, Molly,
and another man. Lenehan and Molly flirted while Bloom
looked out the window and named the constellations he could
see. M'Coy laughs at first and then defends Bloom's character.
Copyright © 2018 Course Hero, Inc.
Section Summaries 27
In the 10th vignette, Bloom looks for a book for Molly at the
outdoor bookstall. He peruses The Awful Disclosures of Maria
Monk, a tell-all about sexual abuse and infanticide in a convent;
Aristotle's Masterpiece, and Tales of the Ghetto by Leopold
von Sacher Masoch, for whom masochism was named. The
bookseller suggests an erotic novel featuring birching
(corporal punishment with a birch rod), which Bloom has read,
and another titled Sweets of Sin. Bloom buys Sweets of Sin for
Molly.
In the 11th vignette, Simon Dedalus emerges from Dillon's
auction rooms. His daughter Dilly is waiting for him. She asks
for money and he chastises her for bothering him, but he gives
her a shilling. She tells him he must have more, and he gives
her a few pennies to buy a treat.
In the 12th vignette, Tom Kernan drinks a shot of gin and talks
to the barman, Crimmins. They discuss the United States (it
accepts "the sweepings of all nations") and the steamboat
General Slocum, which caught fire and sank in New York City's
East River the day before, June 15. Simon Dedalus and Father
Cowley say hello to each other. Tom Kernan leaves the bar and
passes the spot where the Irish nationalist Robert Emmet was
hanged in 1803. Kernan, who is pro-English, thinks of other
rebels who were "on the wrong side."
In the 13th vignette, Stephen Dedalus watches a jeweler
examine a necklace. The two midwives Stephen saw on the
beach walk through Irishtown. Stephen looks through the
books at a book cart and wonders if he'll find any books he
won as prizes in school, which have since been pawned by his
family. He looks at "the eighth and ninth book of Moses,"
apocryphal books not found in the Bible which promise the
"secret of all secrets." He runs into his younger sister Dilly, who
is buying a book on French grammar. He sees she is
"drowning" in the poverty and misery of the Dedalus household.
He fears "She will drown me with her ... Salt green death."
In the 14th vignette, Simon Dedalus talks to Father Cowley.
Cowley complains he owes money to Reuben J. Dodd, an
unscrupulous "gombeen," Irish slang for a moneylender.
Cowley is waiting for Ben Dollard, who will get Dodd off his
back. When Dollard shows up he advises Cowley that Dodd's
claim on him is worthless, but only because Cowley also owes
his landlord.
In the 15th vignette, Martin Cunningham discusses the
collection he has taken up for Paddy Dignam's widow and their
son Patrick Dignam ("the youngster"). Nolan remarks Bloom
Ulysses Study Guide
gave five shillings. Cunningham and Power both comment on
the rarity of a Jew giving out money without complaint. They
run into Long John Fanning, who is after Father Cowley for the
money he owes Dodd. They all notice a clatter of hoofbeats; it
is the viceregal cavalcade, with "the lord lieutenant general and
general governor of Ireland" on parade.
In the 16th vignette, Haines and Buck Mulligan go to the Dublin
Bakery Company ("D.B.C.") for coffee ("mélanges") and scones.
Buck mentions Haines missed Stephen's discussion of Hamlet.
Haines says Stephen probably has an "idée fixe" (obsession),
but Haines doesn't know what it is. Buck predicts Stephen's
writing will never have "the Attic note" (referring to ancient
Greece), but he will write something in 10 years. Bloom's
throwaway Elijah tract keeps floating down the Liffey River.
In the 17th vignette, Stephen's tutor, Almidano Artifoni, walks
along. The madman Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tindall
Farrell follows him for a while but turns back to avoid
lampposts. Cashel bumps into the cane of the "blind stripling"
Bloom helped earlier. As Cashel walks away the blind man
says, "God's curse on you ... you bitch's bastard!"
In the 18th vignette, young Patrick Dignam, son of the late
Paddy Dignam, dawdles on his way back home. He was sent
out to get pork, but he is not eager to get home and rejoin the
mourners. He looks in a dress-shop window and at a poster
announcing a boxing match. He considers running away to
watch the match, but he realizes the poster is old and the
match is over. He remembers the gray face of his father's
corpse, a fly walking over the corpse's face "up to his eye," and
the sound of the coffin lid being screwed on.
In the 19th vignette, the narrative goes back in time and starts
over. The Earl of Dudley, Lady Dudley, and Lieutenant Colonel
Heseltine leave the viceregal lodge in a carriage. The "viceregal
cavalcade," a kind of horse-drawn motorcade, goes from
Phoenix Park on its way to the Mirus bazaar. Along the way, it
passes by characters from the previous 18 vignettes (and
many other characters from Ulysses). Among these are Tom
Kernan, Richie Goulding, Reuben J. Dodd, Miss Kennedy and
Miss Douce at the Ormond Hotel, Simon Dedalus, Hugh C.
Love, Lenehan and M'Coy, Gerty McDowell, Buck Mulligan,
Mrs. Breen, and Blazes Boylan, as well as the blind stripling, the
man in the mackintosh, and the two midwives from the beach.
The earl acknowledges those who salute him, including "the
salute of Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a
closing door."
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Section Summaries 28
Analysis
In this episode Joyce shows readers what it would be like to
tell a story simultaneously in space, rather than in time. This
ties back to Stephen's thoughts in the "Proteus" episode when
he considered the nacheinander, "one after another," and
nebeneinander, "next to each other." A conventional narrative
tells a story with one event following another, while an
unconventional one—like Ulysses—can tell the story with
events next to each other in space. The parallel to The
Odyssey is not as direct as in the other episode names. The
wandering rocks of The Odyssey represent a route Odysseus
chooses not to take, just as this episode departs from the
journey of its main characters as they wander about Dublin
living their normal lives.
The episode opens with the vignette about Father Conmee
(representative of the church) and it ends with the viceregal
cavalcade (representative of the state). Joyce may be playing
with the reader's usual ideas about how to organize a story, but
in Dublin, church and state still provide the bookends. The
cavalcade is the more significant of the two, as it receives the
most narrative attention in the episode; it attracts the attention
of almost all of the characters (though not Bloom or Stephen)
and reminds all these Dubliners that Ireland is not a free state
but a territory subject to English rule.
Like a trapeze artist working without a net, Joyce writes an
episode without his main characters. Molly is reduced to one
arm appearing at a window, and Bloom and Stephen are only
briefly glimpsed. Dispersed in so many vignettes and
characters, the episode is unified in three ways: by the image
of Bloom's Elijah throwaway floating down the river; by the
sound or sight of the viceregal cavalcade passing by; and by
the reappearance of characters in the different vignettes. So
the blind stripling successively encounters Artifoni, Cashel, and
the Earl of Dudley. Likewise, Miss Dunne, Lenehan, and Dudley
all pass by the "dauby" smile of a poster of the performer Marie
Kendall. Once again, "Coming events cast their shadows
before"; characters appear in "Wandering Rocks" whom
readers do not meet properly until later. For example, in a
window at the Ormond Hotel, readers see "Bronze by gold,
Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head." This same scene
is repeated several times in the next episode, "Sirens," which
begins with the words bronze by gold.
Although "Wandering Rocks" takes an expansive view, the
episode does develop the main characters further. Molly and
Ulysses Study Guide
Boylan are seen in characteristic actions—Molly beckoning
from her boudoir and Boylan roguishly flirting. Stephen's father
Simon has previously been shown to be scornful toward
Stephen, but in "Wandering Rocks" he is positively vicious with
his daughter Dilly. First he mocks Dilly's posture, and then he
calls her and her sister "an insolent pack of little bitches."
Readers get more of a picture of Stephen's family—he and his
sisters living in poverty while the disagreeable and often drunk
father treats them as burdens and offers no financial support.
M'Coy makes an unexpectedly keen observation about Bloom.
Previously when characters talked about Bloom they maligned
him as a cuckold or a Jew, but M'Coy points out, "There's a
touch of the artist about old Bloom." Bloom does lack the
education and the artistic aims of Stephen, but he certainly is
imaginative. M'Coy's remark foreshadows Bloom's relationship
as father to artistic, intellectual Stephen. The episode also
reveals more about Bloom and Molly's marriage. Buying Molly a
book called Sweets of Sin, Bloom seems to be encouraging her
infidelity. But when Bloom reads some passages, he imagines
Molly desiring him. Bloom's gift of the erotic book is a
roundabout way of encouraging their sexual relationship as
well as her infidelity.
Part 2, Episode 11
Summary
As the episode opens, it is almost 4 p.m. at the bar of the
Ormond Hotel. Two barmaids, Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy,
watch the viceregal cavalcade go by, and Miss Douce thinks a
member of the party looks at her. A busboy is insolent to the
barmaids. They reprimand him and then laugh hysterically
about the chemist (pharmacist), Mr. Boyd, who they find
repulsive. The narrator mocks the idea of being married to
Bloom. Simon Dedalus enters the bar and flirts with Miss
Douce, who has been to the seaside on vacation. She pours
him a whiskey, and then Lenehan enters.
Outside, Bloom passes by a shop called Moulang's. He thinks
about Molly's date with Boylan: "At four, she said." He reaches
the Essex Bridge and decides to buy paper to write to his
secret correspondent, Martha.
Back in the bar, Lenehan tells Simon he brings greetings from
his son Stephen. Lenehan tells Simon about going for drinks
Copyright © 2018 Course Hero, Inc.
Section Summaries 29
with Stephen, remembering their talk in the newspaper office.
Miss Douce says the piano tuner came today, a young blind
man, while Blazes Boylan enters the bar.
Bloom meets Richie Goulding in the street, and they decide to
dine at the bar of the Ormond Hotel. The clock strikes four.
Back at the bar, Lenehan flirts with Miss Douce, urging her to
snap her garter on her thigh in imitation of the clock striking
four. Miss Douce does so, Boylan announces he must go, and
Lenehan leaves with him.
Ben Dollard plays a song on the piano, "Love and War." Father
Cowley, who is also at the bar, recalls a time Ben had a concert
and didn't have a proper evening suit to wear. He got one from
Bloom and Molly, who were in the used clothing business at
the time. Cowley, Ben, and Dedalus talk about Molly; she is
from Gibraltar and her father was Major Tweedy. Dedalus
makes a snarky comment about Molly and the used clothing
business. "Mrs Marion has left off clothes of all descriptions,"
he says, meaning she has taken off her clothes for others
many times.
Bloom recalls his conversation that morning with Molly while he
and Richie eat. Ben starts to sing "Love and War," but Cowley
says he is singing the wrong part. Simon and Cowley make
lewd jokes about Ben's big "organ" (his voice). After some
cajoling, Simon sings an aria from the opera Martha. Bloom
thinks about Richie's hard life, his backaches, and how Richie is
something of a blowhard, boasting and believing his own lies.
He then wonders whether it's the words or music that arouse
listeners of songs and decides "it's what's behind." He also
thinks about the coincidence that Simon is singing Martha just
as he thinks about writing to Martha.
Bloom decides to write to Martha there in the bar. He thinks
about the fact music can be reduced to mathematical
relationships: "Numbers it is. All music when you come to
think." But just saying numbers wouldn't have the effect music
does, he muses. He wonders why he, a married man, is writing
to Martha. He decides if Molly can cheat, he can too: "Sauce
for the gander." He writes a flirtatious letter, then decides the
letter needs a sad postscript to draw Martha in and writes, "I
am so lonely."
Miss Douce holds a seashell up to her ear to hear the ocean.
Bloom watches, thinking about sounds and how there is music
everywhere, or at least noise. He says he must leave, but he
stays to hear Ben Dollard sing "The Croppy Boy," a song about
the rebel Robert Emmet. Bloom thinks about playing a woman
Ulysses Study Guide
like a flute before he leaves. He notices the soap in his back
pocket has gotten sticky with sweat and remembers he has to
pick up lotion for Molly. He feels gassy and wonders if it's from
the cider he just had or the burgundy from lunch.
The piano tuner, the "blind stripling," enters the bar to retrieve
his tuning fork. Bloom thinks of Robert Emmet's last words
before he was executed. A loud tram goes by and Bloom takes
the opportunity to pass gas, just as he thinks of Emmet's final
words.
Analysis
Joyce follows the "Wandering Rocks" storytelling technique
with a more conventional one in this episode. This is
appropriate, for the "Sirens" episode experiments with sound
and music, an art intimately bound up with time. As he did in
the "Aeolus" episode, where he experiments with the visual and
typographic limits of prose fiction, Joyce seems to be going to
the limit. In this case he is trying to see how far words can be
reduced to sounds before they lose all sense and meaning.
In The Odyssey Odysseus and his men were tempted by the
Sirens, beautiful female creatures whose singing lured sailors
to their deaths. The "Sirens" episode begins with a series of
sentence fragments that act like a musical overture as words
are assembled for their sound patterns. Some are combined
for a rhythmic pattern: "hoofirons, steelyringing." Some
fragments highlight similar sounds: "Blue Bloom." Others are
onomatopoetic: "Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap." All these
fragments turn up later in the episode, an anticipation in
miniature of the whole episode, from "Bronze by gold heard the
hoofirons, stelllyringing" to "Done. / Begin!"
Bloom, with his experimenter's turn of mind, considers whether
music could be reduced to numbers: "Martha, seven times nine
minus x thirtyfive thousand." He is correct that such a music
would "fall quite flat." What it lacks is "the sounds." Similarly,
throughout the episode, Joyce experiments with turning prose
into music. He lights on rhythmic phrases that sound musical,
such as "Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. Coin rang." Other times
he is interested in strange or lewd sounds. To Bloom, the
question is whether a sound like a creaking door is music or
noise. Bloom recalls Molly liked the name of the writer of her
latest book, Paul de Kock. Molly's nickname for Bloom is
"Poldy," short for Leopold. By emphasizing the punning
proximity of the two names, Joyce suggests Molly's sexual
Copyright © 2018 Course Hero, Inc.
Section Summaries 30
desire was once focused on Bloom: "Paul de Kock with a loud
proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock."
Clearly with "Cockcock" Joyce also makes fun of the loftiness
of this musical experiment. Bloom thinks to himself,
"Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom." In fact, the
word ventriloquise comes from the Latin words for "stomach"
and "talk"; ventriloquists were thought to talk from their
stomachs. Bloom ventriloquizes his way to the end of the
episode, closing his mouth and giving vent to the gasses in his
stomach. Even more scandalously, Bloom's fart is timed with a
memory of the "seven last words" of Robert Emmet, the Irish
rebel. In 1803 Emmet was hanged, drawn, and quartered, as
mentioned in the "Wandering Rocks" episode. His last words
were "When my country takes her place among the nations of
the earth, then and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I
have done." Bloom's expulsion of gas flippantly mocks the
solemn patriotic memory: "Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa.
Written. I have. / Pprrpffrrppffff. / Done."
This episode is not only lewd puns and fart jokes, however.
Joyce takes another daring leap in narrative style—he merges
the characters' voices with the narrator's. Mina and Lydia laugh
themselves silly in the Ormond bar, imagining marrying the ugly
old chemist: "—Married to the greasy nose! she [Mina] yelled."
Then the narrator turns that mockery on Bloom, who is
nowhere near the bar: "Married to Bloom, to
greaseaseabloom." This second insult doesn't use the em dash
(—) that Joyce uses to mark words as dialogue, nor is it
followed by "she yelled." Readers expect the characters'
voices and the narrator's voice to remain distinct. Joyce's
innovation makes plain that all the voices in his novel are
arranged and tuned by the same composer. Thus something
apparently trivial, a joke about grease, emphasizes Ulysses is a
written work, created by an artist. In "Aeolus" newspaper
headlines emphasize this visually; "Sirens" emphasizes it with
rhymes, sounds, and song.
Molly's date with Boylan hangs over the episode. Bloom recalls
her words: "Not yet. At four." In the following pages this
becomes a refrain repeating over and over in his mind. "At four.
Near now ... At four she ... At four he ... At four." On the one
hand it clearly pains Bloom. He hears Boylan leave the bar and
thinks, "He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom sighed." On the
other hand, Bloom's idea of "sauce for the gander" is open to
multiple interpretations. The proverb goes, "What is sauce for
the goose is sauce for the gander"—if one partner cheats so
can the other. But Bloom's heart is not in his secret
Ulysses Study Guide
correspondence this afternoon. "Bore this," he thinks as he
writes to Martha. But it's possible Bloom somehow enjoys
Molly's infidelity, a different meaning of "sauce for the goose."
As with his roundabout gift of Sweets of Sin, Bloom may see
himself as the end point for all Molly's sexual experiments and
dalliances.
Part 2, Episode 12
Summary
Just before 5 p.m. an unnamed, first-person narrator is talking
with a policeman and almost has his eye poked out by a
chimney sweep's broom. The narrator meets Joe Hynes. The
narration then switches to a parody of 19th-century
translations of Irish myth, poetry, and legend, describing an
abundant Irish countryside. The narration switches back, and
the narrator and Hynes go to Barney Kiernan's pub. The citizen
is there, talking to a dog named Garryowen. Hynes buys pints
for himself, the citizen, and the narrator. Narration shifts back
to parody, and the citizen is described as a hero wearing an
"unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide." He wears a belt
of stones engraved with the images of "Irish heroes," including
Chuchulin, Charlemagne, and Lady Godiva.
Bloom enters the pub, looking for Martin Cunningham. Bloom
wants to talk to him about Paddy Dignam's life insurance but
he isn't there. In the course of the episode, Alf Bergan, J.J.
O'Molloy, John Wyse Nolan, and finally Martin all show up at
the pub. Bloom turns down the offer of a drink from Hynes but
accepts a cigar. The narration runs through several styles,
including a parody of scientific discourse; a sensationalist
newspaper recounting the execution of Irish rebel Robert
Emmet; and parliamentary proceedings with accusatory
questions asked about the Phoenix Park murders.
Throughout the episode the citizen becomes increasingly
xenophobic (anti-foreigner). "We want no more strangers in
our house," he says. Bloom suggests moderation and is
ignored. He claims Ireland is his nation, and the citizen spits in
disgust. Bloom makes a plea in favor of love and against "force,
hatred, history, all that," then goes to the courthouse to look for
Martin. Lenehan claims Bloom only pretended to go to the
courthouse; he really went to collect his winnings on
Throwaway in the Gold Cup. The talk turns to other
Copyright © 2018 Course Hero, Inc.
Section Summaries 31
conspiracies with Bloom at their center. And Bloom didn't even
buy anyone drinks, the narrator recalls.
Martin enters and Bloom returns. The citizen is getting edgy,
and Martin hurries Bloom out of the pub. They get in a carriage
while the citizen goes to the door of the pub and shouts,
"Three cheers for Israel!" Bloom stands up in the carriage and
talks back, listing famous Jews in history, including "the Savior
and his father. Your God." The narration returns to parody, this
time of a newspaper account of a royal visit. The angry citizen
throws a biscuit tin at the carriage, but it misses. The dog
Garryowen runs after the carriage. Now the narration shifts to
a parody of a newspaper account of a natural disaster. The
citizen urges his dog after the carriage. Finally, the narration
assumes a biblical style in which Bloom is described as Elijah
ascending to heaven in a chariot.
Analysis
The "Cyclops" episode is written in two perspectives, first-
person and third-person. The third-person sections parody
many writing styles, including Irish myth, journalism, and
scientific discourse.
Joyce's "Cyclops" episode makes numerous parallels with
Homer's Odyssey. The episode is full of images of eyes and
blindness. This is not only appropriate for a section named for
The Odyssey's one-eyed monster, the Cyclops, but it follows
the "Sirens" episode where sound and the ear dominate.
Through his choice of imagery Joyce offers a kind of critique
of the idea that there is any one true or absolute perspective
with which to view the world. A "one-eyed" view is that of the
narrow-minded, xenophobic citizen who parallels Homer's
character Polyphemus, a Cyclops blinded by Odysseus. By
parodying multiple writing styles, Joyce is commenting that all
people share a narrow-minded or one-sided perspective and
that attempting to be neutral and objective is impossible. As he
does in the "Lestrygonians" episode, Joyce shows the
necessity of combining multiple perspectives to arrive at real
insight.
At the very start the narrator is almost poked in the eye with a
broom. When Joe Hynes buys the drinks, the narrator is so
shocked "the sight nearly left [his] eyes." The dog Garryowen
is described by the narrator as having just one eye: "Growling
and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth
[drought]." Bloom quotes the proverb about people who can't
Ulysses Study Guide Section Summaries 32

see the beam in their own eye, and the citizen responds, Bloom identifies history with force and hatred, inviting us to
"There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see." There compare and contrast their outlooks. Likewise, Stephen is
are also images of the burning log Odysseus used to blind the preoccupied with love (especially maternal love), but Bloom
giant. Bloom's cigar is so big the narrator calls it a speaks of love in much broader terms, as "the opposite of
"knockmedown cigar," and later it almost burns Bloom. hatred" and indeed what is "really life," and so here too they
may be compared. Such comparison is in keeping with the
The most surprising eye of all is the one that looks so coldly on spirit of the episode, since it offers a sort of "bifocal"
Bloom and the others: the "I" of the first-person narrator. In the perspective on love and history, which is precisely the opposite
12th episode of an 18-episode novel, suddenly a first-person of the myopia and narrowness of the citizen and the
narrator appears: "I was just passing the time of day with old xenophobia he represents.
Troy." It is a radical stylistic departure for a novel previously
built on third-person narration and stream of consciousness.
One effect of the narrator's "I" is to demonstrate another form
of Cyclopean shortsightedness. In Bloom's beloved wife the
Part 2, Episode 13
narrator sees only "that fat heap," and in Bloom's empirical turn
of mind, the narrator sees only "argol bargol" (argumentative
blather). Bloom may seem "cod-eyed" to the narrator, but he
Summary
does advance ideals of self-awareness and empathy. He tries
At 8 p.m. Bloom is at Sandymount Strand, where Stephen
to acknowledge the beam in his own eye, and rather than piling
walked in the "Proteus" episode. Nearby are three girls: Edy
on Denis Breen, he defends Breen's beleaguered wife.
Boardman, Cissy Caffrey, and Gerty McDowell. Edy has her
The most shortsighted figure has to be the citizen. He shares baby with her and Cissy has her twin three-year-old brothers,
with Stephen Dedalus a dislike of English domination, but the who are playing and quarreling. Gerty is described as a
citizen's rhetoric is made ridiculous by its proximity to a lofty, beautiful "specimen of winsome Irish girlhood." She thinks
19th-century dream of ancient Ireland: "the noble district of about the "lovely dog" Garryowen, who belongs to her
Boyle, princes, the sons of kings." The narrator describes the grandfather.
citizen as "working for the cause," but in truth he is speaking
The sound of singing comes from a "men's temperance
Irish to a dog and scrounging drinks in a pub. His dreams of
retreat" (a gathering of men who have promised not to drink
Irish national glory thwarted, the citizen turns against
alcohol). Gerty sees Bloom looking at her and decides "there
"strangers," adding a toxic anti-Semitism to his pro-Irish
was meaning in his look," and he becomes "her dream
sentiments. When Bloom talks about his "persecuted race," he
husband." Gerty believes she notices the expression in Bloom's
is speaking as both a Jew and an Irishman, but the citizen is so
face: "He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey." Through
caught up in his narrow viewpoint he cannot see the parallels
her "women's instinct," she is aware that she has "raised the
and communalities between the two groups.
devil in him."
Bloom says the persecution is happening "This very moment.
A fireworks show begins. Edy, Cissy, and the children go to get
This very instant." But at "this very instant" Boylan is with Molly,
a better look, but Gerty remains where she is, seated on a rock.
which might be Bloom's real worry. Wyse tells him, "Stand up to
As more fireworks go off, Gerty leans back to look up and to
it then." Instead of standing up, Bloom dismisses the use of
show off her "gracefully beautifully shaped legs" and then her
force and advocates love instead, a view that the citizen and
underwear. She notices a man sitting on a rock down the
narrator mock as "Love loves to love love." Some readers find
beach and thinks he is watching her and might be
that love is a through-line that unites all of Ulysses, and love is
masturbating. The fireworks display reaches a climax: "O! then
a major touchstone for the novel. But as this episode is at
the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O!" The
pains to reveal, no perspective is without its faults, not even a
narrator finally tells us the man on the rock is Bloom. The
message of universal love.
interaction between Gerty and Bloom reaches its climax in the
Stephen Dedalus has spoken of history as a nightmare from melodramatic, syrupy style of a romance novel: "O so lovely, O,
which he is trying to awake, and in his speech in this episode soft, sweet, soft!" Cissy calls to Gerty to come along with them.

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Ulysses Study Guide
Gerty waves her handkerchief to Bloom in farewell as he hops
off the rock and walks mindfully down the beach.
The narrative switches to Bloom's perspective and the stream-
of-consciousness style. He notices Gerty walks with a limp, the
"shortcoming" mentioned earlier. He decides she is a "Hot little
devil all the same." He thinks she was near her menstrual
period and this aroused her: "Devils they are when that's
coming on them." He thinks about the way Gerty flirted and
displayed herself, taking off her hat to show her hair. He thinks
of Molly and wonders whether Boylan is paying for sex with
her. He wonders how much she would get. He thinks about his
watch stopping at half past four and wonders if that is
precisely when they had sex.
Bloom rearranges his "wet shirt." The climax might have been
metaphorical or emotional for Gerty, but it was physical for
Bloom. He thinks about how other men enjoy married women
and he does not. He wonders if Gerty could be Martha, his
correspondent. He wonders about how dogs smell each other
in greeting and then tries to investigate his own "man smell,"
but it's overpowered by the scented soap. A nobleman walks
by, and Bloom considers following him or writing about him.
Bloom reminisces about Molly and then thinks about Boylan. A
last firework goes off; Bloom knows it's from the Mirus bazaar,
featured in "Wandering Rocks." He resolves again to visit Mrs.
Purefoy in the maternity hospital, takes a stick, writes the
letters I. AM. A. in the sand, and then scratches them out. He
naps and dreams of the day's events while in a priest's house a
cuckoo clock strikes.
Analysis
In The Odyssey Odysseus is beached, naps, and wakes up to
find Princess Nausicaa and her young maidens doing laundry.
He begs her to help him return home to Ithaca. Gerty
(Nausicaa) and Edy and Cissy (maidens) help Bloom
(Odysseus) find his way home, in this case through sexual
excitement and a coming to terms with his sexuality afterward.
Readers by now have received many indications of Bloom's
sexual frustration: his inability to have pleasurable sex with his
wife, his nonsexual affair with Martha, his many meetings with
prostitutes, and most frustrating, his wife's affair with Blazes
Boylan. Because Bloom feels that Gerty is attracted to him, he
masturbates, thinks he now sees a way to accommodate
Molly's affair with Boylan and can return home on equal
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Section Summaries 33
footing.
"Nausicaa" is told from two perspectives and in two styles. The
first half is a third-person narration that focuses on Gerty
McDowell. The writing style is cloying and sentimental, like a
romance novel. This half also lavishes attention on Gerty's
clothing and the products marketed to women: "iron jelloids"
(pills), eyebrow liner, and "Widow Welch's female pills."
"Nausicaa" is the first episode in Ulysses that explores the
mind of a female character. (The other such episode is
"Penelope," narrated by Molly.) The narrative style of
"Nausicaa" suggests Gerty's mind is full of the sentimental
fiction she reads and the ads and products she consumes.
Bloom, too, is a bit of a sentimentalist and dreamer, his mind
full of advertising slogans and sappy fragments of popular
culture. She thinks she has "her dreams no one knew of," but
apparently anyone who's read a "Princess Novelette" can
guess: she wants to be admired for her beauty and she wants
a "dreamhusband."
What is becoming increasingly clear at this point in the novel is
that all styles, including interior monologue and traditional
third-person omniscient, are simply conventions; some are
simply more familiar (and so more "real") than others. An
interesting question for readers is why Joyce decided to
handle this episode with such sentimentality. Is his point to
satirize the writing styles of romantic literature or to poke fun
at a young woman's thinking full of the superficiality and
banality of popular culture? With a view of Molly's very "real"
thoughts in "Penelope," it seems very possible Joyce is
satirizing the former more so than the latter.
There is verbal irony in such statements as "She could almost
see the swift answering flash of admiration in his eyes." The
word almost indicates how much work Gerty is doing to keep
their encounter going. She provides the flirtation and display
and also imagines his nuanced emotional reactions. Bloom's
narrative reveals he felt a connection of some sort: "it was a
kind of language between us." But Gerty would be hurt to know
Bloom thinks her gait makes her a sexual freak: "I wouldn't
mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses."
There is dramatic irony in seeing the events through Gerty's
and Bloom's eyes. Gerty's narrative associates her with Mary,
the mother of Jesus, while Bloom's narrative calls her a "hot
little devil" or a "limping little devil."
The second half abandons parody and brings back the stream-
of-consciousness style. Bloom the curious experimenter
Ulysses Study Guide
returns. He is just as curious about his emotional and sexual
responses as he is about smells and magnetism. As in the
"Lestrygonians" episode when Bloom ate lunch, pleasure and
disgust are close neighbors. Bloom is repelled by the thought
of sex with a married woman: "Glad to get away from the other
chap's wife. Eating off his cold plate." He then immediately
recalls an incident from the "Lestrygonians" episode, in which
he watched a man spit out his food. Disgusted, Bloom left the
restaurant.
Bloom is complicit in Molly's infidelity, even though he seems
not to like it: "I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums and I the
plumstones." But he is proud of Molly's attractiveness. Other
women might be so unattractive their husbands cheat but not
Molly: "That's where Molly can knock spots off them." He also
seems to encourage her infidelity: "I said to Molly the man at
the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might
like."
At nine o'clock Bloom thinks of returning home but changes his
mind. It is possible he does not want to face Molly. "Go home ...
No. Might still be up. Call to hospital to see." He could mean he
won't go home because there is still a chance Mrs. Purefoy is
up: "Call to hospital to see [if she is up.]" But he might also
want to avoid Molly, or, worse, Molly and Boylan together.
Boylan after all is associated with the phrase "keep it up," as
readers learned in the "Lotus-Eaters" episode. Taken together,
Bloom's writing on the beach ("I. AM. A.") and the cuckoo's cry
may be read as "I am a cuckold."
Part 2, Episode 14
Summary
It is 10 p.m. at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street.
The episode begins with a prayer for fertility. In the first of
many narrative styles used in the episode, the wording imitates
an ancient Roman fertility rite. The section continues in the
style of a translation of the Latin chronicler Sallust. A tortured
passage of Latin syntax praises birth as nature's blessing:
"omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction." Then, in
alliterative Anglo-Saxon, the narration speaks of the joys of life
in the womb: "Before born babe bliss had."
Bloom—"Of Israel's folk was that man"—arrives at the hospital
run by Andrew Horne ("Of that house A. Horne is lord"). He
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stands quietly in the hall as the narration compares him to
Odysseus late in his voyage: "over land and seafloor nine years
had long outwandered." The nurse notices Bloom is dressed in
black for mourning, but Bloom reassures her the deceased
was no one close to him. He asks about a Doctor O'Hare, but
the nurse tells him he died.
The style shifts to that of a medieval morality play called
Everyman. Bloom asks about Mrs. Purefoy. The nurse says it
has been three days, but she hopes the birth will occur soon.
Bloom thinks about the fact that the nurse, a nun, is a virgin. He
calculates she has had nine years of menstrual periods without
conceiving.
The style changes again to that of Sir John Mandeville, a 14th-
century English writer. A door opens to a kind of hospital
cafeteria or employees' canteen. A medical student
("learningknight") named Dixon invites Bloom to come in for a
drink. Bloom hears the cry of a woman in pain. Also present are
Lynch and Madden, who are medical students, a man named
Punch Costello, Lenehan, and Stephen. Bloom feels a fatherly
affection for Stephen, who is the son of his "friend" Simon. The
men talk about why the Bible says women are condemned to
"bring forth [give birth] in pain." Stephen quotes the medieval
scholars Averroes and Moses Maimonides as saying the soul
enters the fetus in the second month.
Bloom thinks about the fact that he has no son. Stephen talks
about something he calls "the postcreation," quoting William
Blake: "Know all men ... time's ruins build eternity's mansions."
In women the word becomes flesh, Stephen says, but that
flesh dies. Then the spirit gives birth to the eternal word. Punch
Costello starts singing. The nurse comes in and shushes them.
A crack of thunder disturbs Stephen, and Bloom tries
unsuccessfully to calm him.
The style changes to 17th-century diary writing reminiscent of
Samuel Pepys. The narration recalls Dignam's funeral, then
describes Mulligan running into Alec Bannon (in town, not at
the hospital). Bannon has met a young woman he calls a
"skittish heifer, beef to the heel," recalling Milly Bloom's words
in her letter to Bloom in the "Calypso" episode.
The style becomes that of Daniel Defoe, an English novelist of
the early 18th century. Lenehan talks about Mr. Deasy's letter,
which appeared in the paper that evening. The talk turns to
hoof-and-mouth disease in cows. The narration switches to the
style of the 18th-century journal the Tatler. Mulligan and
Bannon show up; Mulligan has made up a business card
Ulysses Study Guide
announcing himself as "Fertiliser and Incubator." He proposes
setting up a "national fertilising farm." Looking at the plump
Mulligan, Dixon asks if he is pregnant. Bannon talks to
Crotthers, "the Scotch student," about a girl who gave him a
locket.
The narration changes to the style of 18th-century
philosophers Edmund Burke and David Hume. Bloom is
offended by Costello's lewd talk. Costello is compared to an
ape in the writing style of English naturalist Charles Darwin
(1809–82). The nurse comes in and announces Mrs. Purefoy
has given birth to "an heir" (a boy). Everyone starts talking at
once; Bloom urges moderation. The medical men talk about
postpartum diets, menopause, and sudden births
("Sturzgeburt"). Malachi tells a horror story in which Haines
pops out of a hidden chamber and confesses to murder. Then
Mulligan mocks Stephen's discussion about Hamlet: "The black
panther was himself the ghost of his own father."
In the style of 18th-century essayist Charles Lamb, Bloom is
described as young again. He sees himself in a mirror as a boy.
He recalls his father the salesman. But then the image
vanishes. He thinks again of Rudy, his dead infant son: "No son
of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold
what Leopold was for Rudolph."
Lenehan reminds Stephen of his days at Clongowes. The style
shifts to that of Walter Savage Landor, a 19th-century English
poet. Lynch says they are all eager to see what poetic work
Stephen will "bring forth." Lenehan makes a paradoxical
remark about Stephen not leaving his mother an orphan, and
Stephen is hurt by the mention of her death. Madden talks
about the Gold Cup race, in which he bet on Sceptre but "the
dark horse Throwaway" won in the final stretch.
The narration brings the focus back to the birth, recalling that
"meanwhile" the "physician had brought about a happy
accouchement," that is, a birth. In Dickensian style Mrs. Purefoy
is described as exhausted and happy. She wishes her husband
Doady (Theodore) was there. The narration changes yet again
to the style of Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle
(1795–1881), and Stephen calls out they should all go to Burke's
pub. The surgeon announces the placenta has been delivered.
Bloom tells the nurse to send "a kind word" to Mrs. Purefoy. As
they go to the pub the men celebrate the "doughty deed" of Mr.
Purefoy. Someone says, "all Malthusiasts go hang." They mean,
"to hell with the followers of Robert Malthus," an English cleric
who warned of overpopulation. The men go on decrying birth
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control as "copulation without population."
The style of the narration turns to slang of various kinds. The
men get very drunk, and Stephen suggests another round by
slurring, "More bluggy drunkables?" Bloom perhaps remains
sober. Then someone orders "Ginger cordial." The bartender
repeatedly calls "time," meaning the pub is closing. Someone
notices "yon guy in the mackintosh," the man from the funeral.
Outside as they leave someone vomits. Stephen invites Lynch
to go with him to the "Bawdyhouse" (brothel). Stephen thinks
someone will notice he's in mourning, and he remembers Mr.
Deasy's anti-Semitic remark: "They sinned against the light."
Someone notices a "gospeller." It's the evangelist "Alexander J.
Christ Dowie," who announces, "Elijah is coming! Washed in the
blood of the lamb."
Analysis
There are a few correspondences with Homer's Odyssey in
this episode. Odysseus wakes up on the island of Helios, and
he and his crew are warned against killing the oxen. After he
falls back to sleep, the men disobey and slaughter the animals.
Odysseus awakens and flees alone in the midst of a
tremendous storm unleashed by Zeus. Similarly, Bloom has just
awoken from sleep on the beach and comes upon men who
are belittling women and their difficulties giving birth. Just as
Odysseus defends the sanctity of cattle, Bloom defends
women's travails and, like Oyssesus, finds himself quite alone
at the end of the episode. Meanwhile Stephen hears the loud
boom of thunder and thinks the gods are punishing him for his
profanity and irreverence to the church.
While he was drafting the episode in 1920, Joyce called "Oxen
of the Sun" "the most difficult episode in an odyssey, I think,
both to interpret and to execute." Although this episode seems
to be the most opaque, it might actually be among the most
transparent. It is relatively easy for readers to see what Joyce
is up to: the numerous writing styles, consecutively arranged
by time period, amount to a history of English prose
culminating in a crescendo of slangy, drunken babble. Joyce is
situating his writing in the larger field of the English language,
just as the "Wandering Rocks" episode situates the main
characters in the larger context of Dublin. One part of that
linguistic context is the history of how writers of English have
styled their prose throughout history; the other part is how
contemporary speakers of English stylize their speech. In both
directions orderly prose and inventive speech, a limit of
Ulysses Study Guide
incomprehensibility, can be reached. Joyce shows that every
novel operates within that larger context—between history and
contemporaneity, between sense and nonsense. In "Oxen of
the Sun" the author chooses to lay that context bare.
Viewed from a different angle, is Joyce implying that the
previous history of English writing has led to this epic novel,
Ulysses, in which over 40 writing styles are included? That
might be too strong a point. Rather, the underlying point is that
style and content are inextricably linked. What happens in a
story, and how it happens, influence how the writer chooses to
tell it. Different styles of writing by their very nature focus on
aspects and elements of a narrative to the exclusion of others,
something Joyce does with playfulness and genius throughout
this episode, and indeed, throughout the novel. As one example
of this, note Joyce's use of prosody or alliteration to describe a
baby's birth: "Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he
worship." He echoes both the style of Middle-English writers
and poets of the Middle Ages and a baby's babble.
There is much more to this "most difficult" episode than
stylistic playfulness. The episode starts with praise for birth,
"omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction." It ends with
outcries against birth control: down with "Malthusiasts" and no
"copulation without population." The episode celebrates birth,
but in slightly anxious ways. Birth must be defended against
contraception, and men keep trying to imitate or claim
motherhood. Mulligan's business card proclaims him "Fertiliser
and Incubator." But he can't "incubate" a fetus in his body, and
any "fertiliser" or father can only claim fatherhood, not prove it.
"The wise father knows his own child," Bloom thinks. The father
only has the word of a woman. Stephen's solution to the
dissatisfactions of fatherhood is authorship, a kind of imitation
birth. Bloom and Purefoy may not be sure of their fatherhood,
but Stephen hopes to "bring forth" a literary work. Stephen
may be providing insights on Joyce's own thinking on
fatherhood and authorship, books and birth. In "Oxen of the
Sun" Joyce has raised up all his literary forefathers, gathering
them in an episode that proves him the author.
Part 2, Episode 15
Summary
It is midnight in "Nighttown," Joyce's name in Ulysses for a
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district of Dublin where prostitutes work. The episode is
formatted like a play, and the characters and action have a
surreal, dreamlike quality. The young women Bloom saw on the
beach are there—Cissy, Edy, and Gerty—but they are
prostitutes now. Stephen takes Lynch to see a whore named
Georgina Johnson. Various people, living and dead, scold
Bloom: his wife, his father, and his mother, to name just a few.
Bloom wonders why he's following Stephen but admits
Stephen is "the best of that lot." Bloom runs afoul of the police
and again Bloom faces accusers. Philip Beaufoy accuses
Bloom of plagiarism, and several women accuse him of sexual
misconduct. Some of the women propose whipping or
otherwise corporally punishing him. A "nameless one" taunts
him with images of Boylan and Molly "bareback riding ... arse
over tip."
Bloom still has his potato with him. His mother believed a
potato was a panacea, something that could cure or protect
against all diseases. Bloom gives a speech against capitalistic
exploitation of "our prostituted labour." The speech is very well
received and soon Bloom appears as a king, wearing a cloak
trimmed with ermine and seated on a white horse. Bloom
announces "a new era is about to dawn." Among other
improvements there will be "three acres and a cow for all."
Even the citizen tearfully blesses Bloom.
Dissenters begin accusing Bloom once more, and the mob
calls for him to be lynched. Doctors are summoned to testify
about Bloom. Dr. Dixon says Bloom is "a finished example of
the new womanly man." Bloom gives birth to eight sons,
octuplets, then is set on fire as punishment for his crimes. He
survives, "shrunken" and "carbonised."
Stephen confuses the Roman goddess Ceres with Circe, the
sorceress from The Odyssey. He tries to philosophize as on
the beach but falters. Lynch's cap notices and remembers all
Stephen's errors. Bloom's grandfather Lipoti Virag lectures him
on sexual matters. Virag becomes accusatory and jeering.
Simon Dedalus appears, dressed as a cardinal attended by
"simian acolytes" (monkey altar boys).
The brothel's madam, Bella Cohen, humiliates Bloom, who says,
"Enormously I desire your domination." Bella reveals she has
hooves and turns into a man named Bello. Bello dresses Bloom
as a woman and reminds him a "man of brawn" (Boylan) is with
Molly. A Nymph, who appears in a painting in the Blooms'
bedroom, makes accusations about Bloom's unusual sexual
tastes. Meanwhile, a woman named Zoe reads Stephen's palm,
Ulysses Study Guide
and he babbles about sex and philosophy. Boylan lords it over
Bloom, who cringes and calls him "sir." He tells Bloom to watch
through the keyhole. The fox who buried his grandmother is
hunted while a riderless dark horse wins a race.
Stephen's mother appears in ghoulish form. He denies killing
her and he asks her to tell him "the word known to all men."
She tells him to repent so Stephen wields his ashplant (walking
stick) like a magic sword to banish her. The ashplant damages
a chandelier in the brothel, and Stephen runs out of the brothel.
Bloom settles with Bella and runs after Stephen, who angered
two British soldiers by sarcastically telling them, "You are my
guests. The uninvited." Bloom comes to Stephen's aid. The
soldiers release Stephen to the custody of Corny Kelleher and
Bloom. In the car Stephen dozes and Bloom sees his dead
infant son, Rudy, dressed like a little boy, reading and smiling.
Rudy does not see Bloom.
Analysis
In The Odyssey Odysseus and his men land on the island of
the sorceress Circe. Circe gives his crew food that contains a
drug which turns them into pigs. Odysseus is warned by the
god Hermes, who gives him a magic herb to use as an antidote,
and so he avoids being transformed. He demands Circe lift the
charm, and she does. Odysseus and Circe become lovers, and
he and his men remain on the island for a year.
Joyce chose a dramatic, stream-of-consciousness style for
this series of bizarre, surreal, late-night events. Why? The
episode has often been understood to operate according to a
kind of dream logic, which Freud began to develop in The
Interpretation of Dreams, whereby anxieties, desires, fantasies,
fears, and all manner of psychic material that can't be dealt
with in waking life are processed and achieve a kind of "as-if"
resolution or satisfaction, such as Stephen slaying the ghost of
his mother or Bloom's transformation and subjection. It is
interesting to contrast this with Joyce's use of stream of
consciousness elsewhere. Earlier in the novel, that technique
seems to be "realistic," to give us a certain kind of "truth" about
Stephen or Bloom, but "Circe" turns that on its head. As
opposed to interior monologue, there is now a dramatic
performance of interiority: interior monologue turned inside
out.
Like Circe's island, Nighttown is a place of magic and
transformation. Caps, illustrations, trees, and moths can talk. A
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Section Summaries 37
woman turns into a man, and Bloom becomes a "womanly man"
who gives birth. Thus Bloom achieves the ambition described
in "Oxen of the Sun," becoming a generative, birth-giving man.
And like an island of rooting, rutting pigs, Nighttown is a place
where Dubliners' secret desires come out. A particularly
submissive side of Bloom's personality and sexuality is
exposed. To his delight and in contrast to her characterization
in the "Penelope" episode, Molly appears as haughty and cruel.
Bloom's attraction to Molly's adultery is also laid out in stark
terms. When Bello taunts Bloom about Boylan, he adds Molly is
likely already pregnant with Boylan's child: "That makes you
wild, don't it? Touches the spot?" Like a victim of Circe's
enchantment, Bloom confesses, "I have been a perfect pig."
Bloom's better nature is also dramatized in the episode, but he
brandishes it as a defense against his accusers. When a
watchman says Bloom has been "caught in the act," Bloom
stammers, "I am doing good to others." Bloom's celebration as
a king is also a prelude to his being torn down and humiliated.
However, Bloom's optimism and his enthusiasm for invention
are recognizable in his royal acts. He announces there will be
motorized hearses and "electric dishscrubbers," and he
benevolently proclaims, "Free money, free rent, free love and a
free lay church in a free lay state." (Lay here means "secular,"
in contrast to churchly.)
Stephen's gift of eloquence sometimes deserts him in
Nighttown. He fails to make his point to Lynch's cap, and many
of his thoughts from the "Proteus" episode return in tatters. But
he is still capable of lucid moments, as when he returns to the
principles he declared in his youth. In Joyce's earlier novel, A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen declares to his
friend Cranly he will be an artist and not submit to other forces:
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call
itself my home, my fatherland or my church." In Nighttown
Stephen "taps his brow" and says, "But in here it is I must kill
the priest and the king." His dead mother has been harder to
"kill," especially because Stephen is accused of killing her in
the first place. But in bewitched Nighttown he succeeds in
banishing her. In response to his ghoulish mother's tearful
reproach, Stephen raises his ashplant and cries out, "Nothung!"
This is the name of a magic sword in Wagner's opera Der Ring
des Nibelungen, which the god Wotan placed in an ash tree.
(Hence Stephen's "ashplant.") Stephen's act of defiance
succeeds. The ghost of the mother does not reappear in the
"Circe" episode.
After all the comical and bizarre events of the "Circe" episode,
Ulysses Study Guide
the appearance of Bloom's son, Rudy, changes the mood
radically. Rudy appears as a schoolboy, as if he had lived
beyond infancy. But he retains the most heartbreaking quality
of the dead: he cannot hear or see the living. It is possible the
earlier masochistic scene with Bella was cathartic for Bloom.
Momentarily freed of his sexual obsession, he finds a more
profound level of suffering in himself.
Part 3, Episode 16
Summary
Bloom and Stephen go to a cabman's shelter for food and
drink. They can't find a carriage, so they walk there. Bloom
talks about the dangers of Nighttown and the disloyalty of
Stephen's friends. Stephen runs into a man who borrows half a
crown from him. When they reach the cabman's shelter, Bloom
whispers it is run by Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, a member of the
underground Irish nationalist group the Invincibles. Among the
guests in the cabman's shelter is W.B. Murphy, a sailor who
says he knows Stephen's father. The sailor tells tales of his
adventures at sea and around the world. Bloom thinks about
singing tours. Bloom and Stephen disagree about the
existence of God, and Bloom doubts the truth of the sailor's
stories.
Skin-the-Goat talks about Ireland and the importance of not
emigrating. Bloom recounts his triumph over the citizen that
day. He also talks about the importance of work and Ireland;
Stephen disagrees. Bloom reads about the Gold Cup horse
race, then shows Stephen a picture of Molly and thinks to
himself what a pity it is that the young man must go to
prostitutes and risk getting "a dose" (sexually transmitted
disease). Bloom tries to get Stephen to drink some coffee and
eat something. Stephen says he has not eaten since the day
before yesterday (June 15). Bloom invites Stephen to come to
his house while thinking about utopian schemes. As they walk
away, talking about music, Bloom takes Stephen's arm and
says his wife would love to meet Stephen, who sings a little bit
for Bloom.
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Section Summaries 38
Analysis
The name of this part of Ulysses means "return" in Greek. In
these three episodes, the Odysseus figure, Bloom, makes his
way home.
In The Odyssey Odysseus returns to his estate in Ithaca but
does not go see his wife, Penelope, directly. Instead he
disguises himself as an old man and goes to the home of
Eumaeus, a swineherd and friend, ever trustworthy, kind, and
loyal. But Eumaeus is unaware that the guest is Odysseus.
Eumaeus thinks his guest's story that Odysseus is on his way
back home to Ithaca is a lie. Telemachus, Odysseus's son,
soon arrives, and Eumaeus greets Telemachus as his father,
neither realizing the real father is sitting before them in
disguise. In Ulysses the keeper of the cabman's shelter
(Eumaeus) gives shelter to Bloom (Odysseus, the father) and
Stephen (Telemachus, the son). Who is the keeper of the
cabman's shelter? It is rumored to be Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris,
but no one is sure. And who stands in for Odysseus now? Is it
Bloom or W.B. Murphy, the "redbearded bibulous" sailor who,
unlike Bloom, has just returned from years at sea and is
spinning tall tales about his adventures? Identity and straight
talk are playing hard to get.
In this episode the narrator uses a lot of circumlocution,
meaning using too many words where fewer might do. It comes
from Latin words that mean "talking around." The ambling style
of the prose matches Stephen and Bloom's none-too-speedy
progress across Dublin. For example, when Stephen and
Bloom can find no carriages to take them to the cabman's
shelter, the narrator represents their decision to walk in a long-
winded way: "Evidently there was nothing for it but put a good
face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did."
However, Joyce finally gives us an episode told in rather "plain
words," full of clichés and tired expressions, but is it any easier
to follow? Ordinary everyday language is full of idioms and
figures of speech, which we come to understand through
experience. "Eumaeus" reckons with discourse that is nothing
but figures of speech, and even this language, applied with this
single-mindedness, seems to slip loose from the content it's
meant to represent or communicate. Thus, all the figures who
aren't who they seem to be, like the man supposed to be "Skin-
the-Goat" or the red-headed sailor who might be another
Odysseus.
Finally, Stephen and Bloom are alone together. In "Oxen of the
Sun" and "Circe" they seldom spoke directly to each other.
Ulysses Study Guide Section Summaries 39

Bloom's fatherliness in relation to Stephen is emphasized in a

roundabout way: "the elder man who was several years the
Summary
other's senior or like his father." But there are glitches in their
This episode in written in the form of catechism, a summary of
conversation. Stephen airily states God's existence has been
religious doctrine meant to instruct new members and often
proven and his confidence flummoxes Bloom, the scientific
takes the form of questions and answers. It is 2 a.m. the
thinker. Bloom makes a remark intending to show his
following day, June 17, 1904. As Bloom and Stephen walk from
appreciation to Stephen: "You both belong to Ireland, the brain
the cabman's shelter to Bloom's house they talk of various
[Stephen] and the brawn [a peasant]." But Stephen fastens
subjects, including "emergency dustbuckets, the Roman
onto the Irish part of the equation rather than the compliment
catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, [and] the Irish nation."
to his smarts. Prickly as always about patriotism, Stephen
They both prefer "cisatlantic" to "transatlantic" life, meaning
deflects Bloom's remark about belonging to Ireland: "But I
they prefer to stay in Europe and not cross the Atlantic to
suspect ... that Ireland must be important because it belongs to
America. They disagree on some topics; Bloom favors "dietary
me." This statement echoes Stephen's earlier inversion of
and civic selfhelp" and disagrees with Stephen's views about
"dying for one's country" in Nighttown: "But I say: Let my
"the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature."
country die for me."
Arriving home, Bloom finds he has forgotten his key to the gate
However, Bloom does express concern for Stephen's well-
so he climbs over the garden wall, falls down, and enters his
being. And the relationship is not all one way. Stephen uneasily
house through the basement door. He lets Stephen in and
accepts Bloom's touch when Bloom links arms with him. In
makes cocoa for himself and Stephen. There are long answers
"Telemachus," when Buck makes the same gesture, "Stephen
about the source of the water in the kettle and about water's
free[s] his arm quietly." But Bloom and Stephen's father-son
properties. Stephen reveals he is a "hydrophobe," afraid of
dynamic is not dramatic or life-altering. Joyce's Ulysses is an
water and reluctant to wash. Bloom finds Boylan's torn-up Gold
epic of the everyday; the glitches and prickliness of Bloom and
Cup betting slips in the pocket of Molly's apron, but this
Stephen's encounter suggest tomorrow will be much like
knowledge doesn't seem to change his mood, which is
today, but not identical: "history repeating itself with a
described as satisfied, without expectations or
difference."
disappointments. Bloom's attempts at poetry are described,
The newspaper account of the Gold Cup symbolically links and he wonders what to do with wives and how to keep them
Bloom and the winning horse, Throwaway. Throwaway is called occupied. He thinks about Molly's shortcomings in intelligence
an "outsider" and "the rank outsider." Bloom is very much an or education. Stephen and Bloom compare Hebrew and Gaelic
outsider, as can be seen in the way the sailor warms to languages. Stephen sings an anti-Semitic song, which saddens
Stephen and ignores Bloom. Perhaps Bloom triumphs over Bloom as he then recalls his daughter's childhood.
Boylan because Boylan and Lenehan bet on Sceptre. However,
Bloom invites Stephen to spend the night in a room next to his
this triumph is not obviously life-changing. Moments after the
and Molly's which Stephen declines. Stephen and Bloom make
account of the race, Bloom pushes Molly on Stephen, showing
plans for Stephen to teach Italian, take voices lessons from
him a photo, talking about arranging an introduction, and
Molly, and have philosophical dialogues with Bloom. Bloom
thinking to himself about the advantages of older-
recalls a circus performance in which a clown pretended
woman/younger-man relationships. When adultery is
Bloom was his father. Stephen leaves and Bloom lights his way
mentioned, Bloom thinks to himself "the legitimate husband"
out with a candle. They pause in the garden, look at the night
might have been "a party to it," complicit in the affair. The
sky, and urinate side by side. Stephen leaves and the church
defeats and triumphs of this one day in Dublin are perhaps
bells toll. Bloom thinks of owning land—a utopian estate called
cyclical, to be repeated on another day.
Flowerville—and of urban-improvement schemes. The narration
recalls Rudolph Bloom's will and suicide note. Bloom goes up
to his and Molly's bedroom, gets in bed, lies head to foot with
Part 3, Episode 17 Molly, and kisses her buttocks. She asks him about his day. He
tells her, leaving out such incidents as the letter from Martha,
the fight with the citizen, the sight of Gerty on the beach, and

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Ulysses Study Guide
the visit to the brothel. Bloom goes to sleep, dreaming of an
egg.
Analysis
The "Ithaca" episode parallels Book 17 of The Odyssey.
Odysseus and Telemachus part as they make their way to
Odysseus's palace. Suitors clamor for Penelope's attentions
but are unable to win her heart. Telemachus and Odysseus,
still in disguise, kill all her suitors. Afterward, Odysseus
fumigates his house. The parallels are many and somewhat
minor to the overarching themes. Very different, however, is
that Odysseus is the hero vanquishing his wife's suitors, while
Bloom, returning home, does nothing at the sight of Blazes
Boylan's body imprint still visible on the bedsheets of his wife's
bed.
In "Ithaca" Joyce's questions and answers display an incisive,
detailed knowledge of Stephen and Bloom, a remarkable
command of their lives on psychological, symbolic, and
empirical levels. But it is also true that all we learn in the
episode depends, in some necessary way, on the nature of the
questions being asked. Questions, especially those in a
catechism, presuppose certain answers and certain forms of
answers. A catechism, moreover, is meant to be instructional,
rather than investigative. The final question and answer
reminds readers this is all just writing—Stephen and Bloom are
fictional. The final question, "Where?" is simple but profound.
Where is the "roc's auk's egg" the drowsy Bloom is dreaming
of? The wordless answer, an oversized final punctuation mark,
signify that the dream and the egg and "the heaventree of
stars" exist nowhere but on the page.
There is religious symbolism in "Ithaca." Bloom's preparation of
cocoa for Stephen is like the Christian rite of communion, and
the way Bloom leads Stephen out of the house, by candlelight
and with Stephen's head bare, is like the procession at the end
of Catholic Mass. When "jocose" (joking) Bloom and "serious"
Stephen drink the consecrated liquid, they are joined, as shown
by the combined word "jocoserious." The religious doctrine of
transubstantiation, combined with Stephen's theories about
Shakespeare as Hamlet's father and son, illuminate their
relationship.
The narrator of "Ithaca" is very different than the narrator of
"Cyclops." The "Cyclops" narrator, with his scorn for both
Bloom and the citizen, has an oppressive, obvious
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Section Summaries 40
presence—he's even a customer in the pub. In contrast, the
narrator of "Ithaca" is distant from Bloom and Stephen, and
from Dublin. Bloom could probably not recall the exact dates of
his "nocturnal perambulations," or nighttime talks, going back
to 1884, but this narrator can. The narrator stands far above
the fictional world with a vast command of details even Bloom
or Stephen are unlikely to know about themselves, a variation
on what "Circe" suggests about the limits of self-knowledge
and interior monologue.
Much of "Ithaca" does not even consist of narration, in the
sense of describing scenes. Instead, here are lists and lengthy
scientific considerations and detailed insights into Stephen's
and Bloom's minds. Stream of consciousness occasionally
returns as with the startlingly poetic "The heaventree of stars
hung with humid nightblue fruit." But most of the language here
is sometimes opaque, impersonal, even lifeless. We may be
amazed to learn that Bloom and Molly haven't had complete
carnal intercourse in over 10 years (10 years, five months, and
18 days, to be precise), but is that information somehow more
significant to Bloom or to the reader than, say, Bloom's anxiety
in "Sirens" as Molly's affair draws near? On the other hand, the
impersonality or abstraction of the episode also suggests the
transcendence of particularity, contingency, finitude: Bloom
and Stephen are described bodies in motion, subject to
physical laws on Earth just as the stars and comets are in the
"heaventree" above.
Lastly, Bloom's feelings about Molly's adultery are given even
more depth. Previous episodes have shown Bloom as hurt but
also complicit. In "Ithaca" Bloom emerges as even-tempered
regarding Molly. He climbs into bed and finds Boylan's imprint
there but is philosophical about it. Boylan is only another in
what Bloom imagines is a long list of suitors. Even though
Bloom considers inventive and silly responses, such as killing
Boylan in a duel or exposing their adultery by means of a
mechanical bed, he ultimately leans toward "less envy than
equanimity." He takes a philosophical perspective, considering
the affair from the point of view of "the apathy of the stars."
Part 3, Episode 18
Summary
Molly narrates this episode, which consists of eight very long,
Ulysses Study Guide
unpunctuated sentences or paragraphs. It is nearing dawn on
Friday, June 17, 1904. Molly remarks Bloom has never before
asked to have a breakfast of eggs in bed. (Perhaps she
misinterpreted his sleepy mumbling about the "roc's auk's
egg.") She thinks of how he used to curry favor with Mrs.
Riordan back in the early days of their marriage. She then
expresses contempt for the way Bloom moans and malingers
about being sick or injured and is suspicious of the account
Bloom gives of his day. Wondering if he is having an affair with
"some little bitch or other," she recalls firing their maid Mary,
whom she thought was flirting with Bloom. She thinks about
seducing "some nicelooking boy" and about how exasperating
Bloom's sexual practices are. Apparently, he often presses
Molly to tell him who she is thinking of. Molly thinks there is "no
satisfaction" in sex with Bloom, "pretending it to like it ... and
then finish it off myself anyway." She wishes "some man or
other" would embrace her and kiss her. She remembers
confessing to a priest and how it was just another man getting
nosy about her sex life.
Molly recalls with annoyance Boylan slapping her rump as he
left that day: "though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I."
They made love several times, and she took a nap after the
final time. She reflects on his sexual prowess and his size. She
wonders if there was anything between Bloom and Josie Breen
and thinks she would hate to be married to Denis Breen, who
goes to bed with muddy boots on "when the maggot [notion]
takes him." Bloom at least wipes his shoes on the mat.
In the second sentence Molly considers men's sexual tastes:
"theyre all so different." Boylan likes shapely feet. Bloom is
"mad on the subject of drawers" and likes to watch women on
bicycles, hoping he'll see up their skirts. Even courting Molly it
was "drawers drawers the whole blessed time." She recalls
when Bloom gave her eight poppies on her birthday, the eighth
of September. When she got the fruit basket from Boylan
earlier this day she thought he was breaking their date. But
Boylan knocked on the door, though she doesn't know when: "I
never know the time even that watch he gave me never seems
to go properly." She thinks about Bloom's upcoming trip to his
father's grave in Ennis and about the singing tour. She wonders
if Boylan might get jealous of Bloom: "its all very well a husband
but you cant fool a lover." Then she wonders if Boylan would
have sex on the train and if she could run away with him.
In the third sentence Molly thinks about breasts and why men
like them: "theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up
there." She knows about Bloom's "dirty Spanish photo." She
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Section Summaries 41
thinks about his long words ("jawbreakers") and his long-
winded explanations. Bloom was intrigued by Molly's breast
milk when she was nursing—he wanted it in his tea: "well hes
beyond everything I declare." She wishes Boylan "or
somebody" were there so she could make love again. Boylan is
supposed to meet her again on Monday.
In the fourth sentence Molly hears a train. She recalls Hester,
now Mrs. Stanhope, a female friend on Gibraltar. When Hester
left Gibraltar to live with her husband, she and Hester kissed
and cried. She remembers going to a bullfight on Gibraltar and
also the gun salute when Ulysses Grant visited Gibraltar. She
also recalls an early flirtation with a Captain Grove and thinks
about a medical student on Holles Street; she put on her
gloves and hat, hoping he'd follow her out, but he didn't pick up
on her flirting. Molly thinks about how tedious it is that
everyone has their sad story to tell. She considers her spelling
problems and wishes someone would write her a love letter;
Boylan's note to her was perfunctory.
In the fifth sentence Molly thinks about her first love letter. It
was from Lieutenant Mulvey. He signed it "an admirer," to her
great excitement. She recalls her first kiss, which took place on
Gibraltar "under the Moorish wall." She told Mulvey she was
engaged to a Spanish nobleman just to amuse herself. She
recalls lying down with him on a hill. He wanted to make love
but she feared pregnancy, so she masturbated him instead.
She thinks fondly of him but has trouble remembering his first
name: "Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant."
She thinks about her married name, Bloom; at least it's superior
to Breen or any name with the word bottom in it. Then she
considers divorcing Bloom and becoming "Mrs Boylan." She
wonders why her mother didn't give her a nicer name. Her
mother's name was Lupita Laredo (Tweedy). She recalls a ring
Mulvey gave her which she then gave to Lieutenant Gardner,
who later died of fever in the Boer War. She feels oppressed
by Bloom's presence and wishes she had her own room; then
she farts.
In the sixth sentence Molly wonders if the pork she ate that
day was bad. She hopes Bloom won't start hanging around
medical students and carousing at night like a young man. She
recalls again that he asked for breakfast: "then he starts giving
us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon haddy [smoked
haddock]." She thinks about Bloom's boastfulness and how he
pretended he could row though he couldn't even swim and "if
anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup
hed say yes." She remarks on the pun in the name Paul de
Ulysses Study Guide
Kock (though she doesn't connect it to Bloom's nickname,
Poldy). She also recalls Bloom's big talk about how he would
open a musical academy or a hotel, and "whatever I liked he
was going to do immediately if not sooner." She is scandalized
Bloom insisted on sending 15-year-old Milly away to learn to
take photographs. Thinking about the Dedalus men, she
characterizes Simon as "the criticiser" and Stephen, the one
who "got all them prizes for whatever." She feels her period
starting and then recalls she and Boylan put a quilt on the floor
and made love there because the jingly brass bed was too
noisy.
In the seventh sentence Molly wonders if there is anything
wrong with her insides. She thinks scornfully of the questions
doctors ask about gynecological matters: her vagina ("her
cochinchina") and whether she has "an offensive odour" or
"omissions." (She mishears the word emissions.) She thinks
about Bloom's passionate love letters to her long ago: "my
Precious one everything connected with your glorious body."
Bloom's habits are odd, she muses: "look at the way hes
sleeping at the foot of the bed." She wonders if Bloom went to
a prostitute that night: "of course he has to pay for it." She
decides she will check to see whether he still has a condom
("French letter") in his wallet. Molly next thinks about a falling
out between herself and Bloom when she wouldn't "let him lick
[her]" when they lived in Holles Street; she doesn't like the way
Bloom does it. She thinks about the report of Dignam's funeral
and her husband's name appearing as "L Boom." Molly
wonders about Stephen: "he [Bloom] says hes [Stephen's] an
author and going to be a university professor of Italian." Bloom
told her he showed Stephen her photograph. She thinks about
Stephen's age and considers "I'm not too old for him if hes 23
or 24." She wonders about oral sex with Stephen: "so clean
and white with his boyish face." The "handsome young poet"
might write about her, she thinks, and their photographs would
appear in the newspapers.
In the eighth sentence she recalls vulgar Boylan slapping her
rump: "has he no manners nor no refinement." Molly recalls
boys on the street saying a lewd verse when she walked by,
hoping to embarrass her: "it didnt make me blush why should it
either its only nature." She thinks again of Bloom's erotic
interest in kissing her behind and of the outrage of his
expecting her to cook breakfast. She proposes the world
would be better off governed by women, but soon she thinks
how "some woman" is always "ready to stick her knife in you."
Menstruating makes women bad-tempered, Molly thinks.
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Section Summaries 42
Molly becomes irritated with Bloom over her infidelity with
Boylan. She considers telling him all about it: "Ill let him know if
thats what he wanted" and "Ive a mind to tell him every scrap."
She would feel pleasure, she thinks, in humiliating him and feels
it's "all his own fault [she is] an adulteress." She thinks about
her next meeting with Boylan. Then she remembers her early
days with Bloom on Gibraltar, when she used the promise of
sexual pleasure to get Bloom to marry her: "I gave him all the
pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes."
She recalls the natural beauty of Gibraltar, especially the sky
and the sea. Finally, she thinks about accepting Bloom's
marriage proposal and how she had him repeat the question
again and again so that she could answer it again and again:
"yes I said yes I will Yes."
Analysis
"Penelope" is an episode that contrasts in more ways than it
parallels The Odyssey. Most notably, the epic poem of Homer
ends with the triumphant Odysseus sailing home to Ithaca
after many difficult years away at sea, dispatching Penelope's
many suitors with his son, finally returning to his loving wife's
arms. Leopold Bloom is no triumphant hero. He returns home
to Molly who has just slept with a man who is not her husband.
Bloom says nothing to her about this at the time. Later, in her
interior monologue, she says she feels no remorse. The
contrasts between Odysseus and Bloom, and Penelope and
Molly, could not be sharper.
As in the first half of the "Nausicaa" episode, the "Penelope"
episode is given over to the consciousness of a female
character. In "Nausicaa" Gerty's desires were conveniently
aligned with Bloom's: he liked looking and she liked being
looked at. In "Penelope," by contrast, Molly is more
independent than Gerty. Molly's views on Bloom and their
marriage seldom coincide with Bloom's. She finds his sexual
practices inadequate, unsatisfying, and peculiar. In the "Ithaca"
episode Bloom's kissing Molly's rump is described with poetic
effusion as Bloom lavishes attention on "each plump melonous
hemisphere." In "Penelope" Molly reveals she is annoyed by
being woken up and having her nightgown all bunched up as
well. She also reveals what it's like to be married to Bloom, the
utopian dreamer, full of unrealized schemes for their domestic
happiness. "[H]e ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim
for all the plans he invents," Molly says, meaning his half-baked,
unrealized plans deserve only these lowly materials rather than
metal and ribbons. Molly's earthiness and lack of gullibility are
Ulysses Study Guide Quotes 43

often refreshing.
g Quotes
Most importantly, readers finally have an opportunity to get to
know Molly through her own words and thoughts. All previous
views of her were from a male perspective, that she sleeps "It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter
around, is promiscuous, and compulsively flirtatious. However,
Molly indicates that Blazes Boylan is her first and only lover
waters."
since her marriage to Bloom, and that their marriage is
essentially sexless. Joyce tells the other, female side of the — Narrator, Part 1, Episode 1
relationship, albeit through the rambling thoughts of a woman
lying half-awake in bed. Readers may find the style of writing
Stephen is looking at the bay from the Martello Tower and
with no punctuation difficult, but after some time, what strikes
considering the bay as a bowl. Buck Mulligan quotes the
the reader is not the style, as in many other episodes, but the
Homeric epithet (nickname or phrase) for the sea, "the wine-
substance of her mind. Her speech flows, but not in
dark sea." But to Stephen the sea this morning looks green,
accordance with any art of rhetoric, and not for any listener in
and it reminds him of two things. The first is a song in a play by
her world. Her words are the relentless, inflowing, outflowing
Irish writer W.B. Yeats, containing the phrase "love's bitter
tide of her life, its many actors and events tumbling forth,
mystery." The second is when his dying mother wept over his
revealing the fullness of her personality.
irreligiosity and then vomited green bile into a basin. So looking
at the sea, Stephen thinks about love, bitterness, and
Her soliloquy often illuminates psychologically complex
mourning.
situations. When thinking of Boylan, she sings a line from
Mozart's opera Don Giovanni: "Mi fa pieta Maseto." It is a line
from the song she will sing on the tour with Boylan—"Là ci
darem." In the opera Zerlina is an innocent peasant girl wooed "What does Shakespeare say? Put
by the corrupt nobleman, Don Giovanni, although she is
but money in thy purse."
engaged to marry the peasant Maseto. In the song Don
Giovanni asks Zerlina to give him her hand ("Là ci darem la
mano"). Zerlina frets, "Mi fa pieta Maseto" (Maseto will chide — Mr. Deasy, Part 1, Episode 2

me). But Bloom does not chide Molly; he makes his peace with
the situation, leaving Molly alone and frustrated. In a Mr. Deasy is advising Stephen to save money and never take
complicated move, Molly shoves her guilt onto Bloom: "serve on any debts. He thinks he will strengthen his advice by
him right its all his own fault if I am an adulteress." Although bringing in Shakespeare, but he misunderstands the passage
she seems motivated by guilt or exasperation, she is not wrong he quotes. These words are said by the villain Iago in the play
about Bloom's complicity in her affair with Boylan. Othello. Iago advises a foolish man, Roderigo, to bring lots of
cash with him because Iago intends to cheat Roderigo of this
The final words of this episode, and of Ulysses, lend support to
money. Mr. Deasy could hardly pick a worse quotation for
the idea love is the single unifying theme of the novel. However,
Stephen, because Stephen reveres Shakespeare.
Molly's account of manipulating Bloom slightly undercuts this,
as does her view of Bloom as a wooer of women. Regarding
Bloom and Josie Breen in former times, Molly wonders if Bloom
was about to "make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind
"History is a nightmare from which
of manner like he did to me." The word plabbery is Joyce's I am trying to awake."
invention, perhaps a combination of blathery and palaver, but
here it appears as Molly's invention. In her untutored way she is
— Stephen, Part 1, Episode 2
poetic, and she skewers Bloom's talkativeness. Nonetheless,
she does recall him with affection, and her memory of his
marriage proposal at the end of the episode shows genuine Stephen views the history of Ireland's struggles as a long
excitement and joy. series of invasions, rebellions, betrayals, and mourned heroes

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Ulysses Study Guide Quotes 44

that hold citizens spellbound with the promised dream of

liberty. Rather than holding on to this dream, Stephen would
like to be free of the illusion.
"Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to
Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought,
nought, one."
— Stephen, Part 1, Episode 3
Stephen's protean imagination transforms a thought about
navels and umbilical cords into a cosmic telephone system
through which he could put in a call to Eden. This is typical of
the way Stephen views his own situation within a cosmic
framework. Bloom has a similar thought; he wants to put a
telephone system in graves to ensure the dead are dead. The
contrast illuminates their different thought processes. Bloom is
empirical, practical, and experimental, while Stephen is
speculative and abstract.
"You will not be the master of
others nor the slave."
— Stephen, Part 1, Episode 3
In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Stephen vowed he
would not serve authorities and idols he did not believe in. In
this statement in the "Proteus" episode Stephen goes further
and forswears dominating others and being dominated.
"Dead breaths I living breathe,
tread dead dust, devour"
— Stephen, Part 1, Episode 3
Stephen imagines a drowned man eaten by fish and the fish
eaten by people. He then considers how the living are linked to
the dead, sharing a bond that extends even into the living
person's lungs.
"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish
the inner organs of beasts and
fowls."
— Narrator, Part 2, Episode 4
This is the first line of the "Calypso" episode and the reader's
introduction to Leopold Bloom. It is typical of Bloom to "relish"
a slightly disgusting food—he likes kidneys with a "tang of
urine." It is also typical of Bloom to plunge into sensual
awareness, as Stephen often plunges into abstract thought.
"Elijah is coming! ... Is coming! Is
coming!! Is coming!!!"
— Narrator, Part 2, Episode 8
Bloom is given a "throwaway" or handbill, announcing the
preaching of the evangelist Alexander J. Dowie. Dowie
proclaims the coming of Elijah, a prophet honored in Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam. Bloom soon throws the paper into the
river, but throughout the next episodes, "Elijah is coming" and
the throwaway handbill itself announce the coming of Bloom.
Bloom is associated with Elijah because his utopian dreams
promise a renewed Ireland, although this renewal occurs only
in jokes and hallucinations from the "New Bloomusalem" in
Nighttown.
"Coming events cast their
shadows before."
— Bloom, Part 2, Episode 8
Bloom thinks of Lizzie Twig, and then he saw her. In Bloom's
theory of coincidences, the future event of seeing Lizzie casts
a "shadow" in the form of a thought about her. Bloom's idea
also describes Ulysses, with its prodigious array of repetitions
and variations.

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Ulysses Study Guide Symbols 45

"We walk through ourselves, priest and the king."

meeting robbers, ghosts, giants,
— Stephen, Part 2, Episode 15
old men ... but always meeting
ourselves." If Stephen wants to be a free artist, not in service to the church
or the British sovereign, he knows he has to change inwardly.
— Stephen, Part 2, Episode 9 When Stephen speaks these words in the brothel, two British
soldiers believe he is insulting their king.

Stephen is making an argument for the continuity of the

individual through several incarnations over the course of their
lives. This supports his theory that Shakespeare is both Hamlet
"The heaventree of stars hung
the father and Hamlet the son. with humid nightblue fruit."

— Narrator, Part 3, Episode 17

"Could you make a hole in another
pint?" In the question-and-answer format in "Ithaca," this is the
answer to the question asking what Stephen and Bloom saw
— Joe Hynes, Part 2, Episode 12 when they emerged from Bloom's house and looked up at the
night sky sometime after 2 a.m. These words are the narrator's,
but they have the poetic ring of Stephen's mind.
Although this episode is famous for the citizen's vicious anti-
Semitism and fanatic nationalism, it is also a gathering of hard-
drinking, witty Irishmen. Here Hynes offers to buy the
anonymous narrator of the "Cyclops" episode a drink. The
"And his heart was going like mad
narrator answers, "Could a swim duck?" The usual word and yes I said yes I will Yes."
order—"could a duck swim"—would mean yes, I want a drink as
surely as ducks can swim. The narrator's reply humorously
— Molly, Part 3, Episode 18
inverts the answer's syntax in imitation of drunkenness.

Molly is recalling Bloom's marriage proposal to her. The

recollection produces a symbolic reconciliation between the
"There is none now to be for
sleeping Bloom and the adulterous Molly. These are the final
Leopold what Leopold was for words of Ulysses, ending the book on a note of understanding,
resolution, and affirmation.
Rudolph."

— Narrator, Part 2, Episode 14

l Symbols
Bloom and Molly's son, Rudy, died at the age of 11 days.
Leopold Bloom was not only Rudolph's son but survived
Rudolph's death. Rudy was Leopold's son but cannot survive
him. The Virag/Bloom line ends with Leopold.
Crossed Keys

Crossed keys in Ulysses is both a symbol for fatherhood and

"But in here it is I must kill the

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Ulysses Study Guide Themes 46

for security in one's own home or homeland. Bloom desires to Bloom triumphs in that he returns to Molly, and in that he
regain his son, Rudy, through a paternal relationship with continues pandering, trying to interest Stephen in her and
Stephen. He also wants to regain the love of his wife and create a rival for Boylan. Throwaway stands for Bloom's
control of his home. On June 16 both Stephen and Bloom leave unlikely but real triumph over Boylan, however fleeting.
home without their keys. Buck pesters Stephen to give him the
key to Martello Tower, and Bloom forgets his latchkey. The
emblem of the crossed keys represents their as yet unfulfilled
union as father to son. Both their houses are occupied by Bloom's Potato
usurpers—Haines has wheedled his way into Stephen's house,
and Boylan will find his way into Bloom and Molly's bed.
There is a general association of the potato with Ireland, but
In the "Aeolus" episode Bloom tries to sell a newspaper ad to
Bloom's potato has a meaning particular to him. His potato
Alexander Keyes, a tea and wine merchant. The design for the
stands for protection from harm. In the "Calypso" episode
ad takes the form of crossed keys. According to Bloom, the
Bloom checks his pockets before leaving the house and says,
ad's headline, "House of Keyes," refers to "the Manx
"Potato I have." He keeps the potato with him all day, and at
parliament. Innuendo of home rule." The Isle of Man, an island
night he temporarily surrenders it to a prostitute. The potato is,
in the Irish Sea, has its own parliament called the "House of
Bloom says, a "talisman" and an "heirloom." In the "Circe"
Keys." Thus it had a degree of independence from Britain that
episode the potato's meaning to him is revealed. His mother
Ireland did not in 1904. By the end of Ulysses Stephen is still
thought potatoes were a "panacea," a cure for or protection
keyless, but Bloom has partly reestablished "home rule." He
against illness. In The Odyssey Odysseus was protected from
returns to his bed and Boylan is gone. James Joyce again
Circe's magic by an antidote called moly; in Ulysses Bloom
utilizes the parallax motif to illuminate and differentiate these
becomes vulnerable to magical transformation after he gives
two perspectives, fatherhood and home rule, engaging the
his potato away.
symbol of crossed keys.

Throwaway m Themes

Bantam Lyons asks to borrow Bloom's newspaper so he can Sex, Love, and Everyday
check the racing announcements. Bloom tells him to keep the
paper because he was "only going to throw it away." Bantam Empathy
misunderstands Bloom and thinks he's just received a tip to bet
on the horse Throwaway in the Gold Cup race. Throwaway is
running at long odds, 20 to 1. Throwaway is a "dark horse," James Joyce's ambition for his epic of Dublin meant nothing
meaning he's unknown and not favored to win. However, should be left out, including love and sex. His main characters
Throwaway does win the Gold Cup that day, beating the horse masturbate, have adulterous affairs, visit a brothel, and also
Blazes Boylan had bet on, Sceptre. Thus Throwaway is an attempt to connect through love and compassion. Bloom and
unlikely contender who triumphs. Molly are the sensualists. Bloom has some unusual sexual
tastes, including an attraction to being cuckolded by his
There is another contest going on that day—between Bloom
unfaithful wife, although it also pains him. Molly lounges in bed
and Boylan. It might seem unlikely for Bloom to score a win
like a queen and has adulterous liaisons. Stephen searches for
against the suave Boylan because, as Joe Hynes says of
"the word known to all men," and it is possible the word is love.
Bloom, "He's a bloody dark horse himself." Although Boylan
Bloom displays a touching capacity for empathy, imagining
does meet with Molly that day, the "Circe" episode shows
himself as a woman in labor, a blind man, or a scorned son.
Bloom enjoys his wife's adultery, even though it also pains him.

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Ulysses Study Guide
However, it is possible to overemphasize the importance of
love in Ulysses. What is epic in Ulysses is its presentation, not
its message about love and compassion. The welter of styles,
the prodigious command of so many details of urban life, and
the rich patterns of allusion and repetition—these are
monumental achievements in modern literature. Its characters'
accomplishments remain ordinary, and June 16, 1904, is an
average day in their lives. To look for something life-changing
in their experiences of sex, love, and empathy on that day
could miss the novel's true achievement. Joyce transformed
the modern novel by attempting to include everything about his
ordinary characters, including their sex lives and their
capacities for love and compassion.
Having said that, it is important to acknowledge an
alternative—that there actually is something remarkable, if not
necessarily "life-changing," about what happens to Stephen
and Bloom (and Molly) during the course of the novel. This is
one of the key questions raised by Joyce's use of Homer: does
the "mythic method" debase Homer's heroes or elevate
Joyce's? Well, it does both. Yes, the characters'
accomplishments remain ordinary, in the sense that much of
what happens is recognizable to us as part of ordinary life, but
Joyce prompts us to rethink the opposition between ordinary
and extraordinary, between mundane and heroic. Stephen
slays the ghost of his mother, which has been haunting him for
a year—how ordinary is that? Bloom has a vision of his dead
son—how ordinary is that?
Moreover, the day is not, strictly speaking, an "average day."
Stephen chooses to surrender his key to his dwelling: he opts
for (at least temporary) homelessness. Even for someone with
as difficult an upbringing as he had, this is no small thing.
Bloom suffers through the knowledge of his wife's infidelity,
and while he (and others) seem to imagine this is nothing new,
Molly's monologue suggests otherwise.
Obviously, there is no way to know if any of the day's events
will turn out to be life-changing: anything is possible, but it lies
outside the novel. The idea of the life-changing event is itself
something of a melodramatic cliché: "I have often thought ...
that small act ... determined the whole aftercourse of both our
lives." If that's the case, then every moment is a life-changing
event.
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Themes 47
Fathers and Sons
Ulysses emphasizes the fragility of the bond of fathers and
sons. Ulysses is replete with thematic fathers and sons, but the
novel's central father-son relationship, Bloom and Stephen, is
anticlimactic. On a thematic level there are parallels to Homer's
epic with the reunion of the son, Telemachus, and his long-
absent father, Odysseus. There are parallels with Hamlet, the
grieving, fatherless son. And there are meditations on Christian
doctrines and heresies concerning how much God the Father
shares the same substance as the Son. Stephen is particularly
concerned with the "mystical estate" of fatherhood. He calls it
mystical because it cannot be seen or biologically proven.
(Ulysses was written before DNA testing for paternity.)
Fatherhood can only be attested to, and such testimony is
open to doubt. This doubt is spoofed by Joyce's use of
quotations from a sacrilegious book by Léo Taxil in the
"Proteus" episode. Taxil writes that when Joseph asks Mary
how she got pregnant, Mary, apparently unable to explain the
concept of the Holy Ghost, says it was "the pigeon." Bloom
also occasionally wonders about paternity, stating in the "Oxen
of the Sun" episode, "The wise father knows his own child."
Because fatherhood is so easily doubted, Stephen focuses on
authorship as a mystical or invisible fatherhood. In Stephen's
theory of Hamlet, Shakespeare is the ghostly father, King
Hamlet. Even though the ghost is insubstantial, Shakespeare's
authorship makes him "the father of all his race."
In Ulysses the meeting of father and son can be dramatic only
on a symbolic and thematic level. Bloom and Stephen do not
come together until episodes 14 through 17, and they converse
directly only in the "Eumaeus" and "Ithaca" episodes. As an
epic of ordinary life, the story of Ulysses does not unfold by
way of crises, plot points, and dramatic resolutions.
Nonetheless, there is a compelling tenderness in the way
Bloom follows, rescues, and guides Stephen home at the end
of the night.
Irish Nationalism and the
Ulysses Study Guide Themes 48

love when he looks at the awkward pupil Sargent. In "Circe" he

Catholic Church pleads with his mother's ghost to tell him "the word known to
all men," which is perhaps love. But on a physical level there is
something repellent or threatening about mothers' love in
With the themes of Irish nationalism and the Catholic Church, Ulysses. Sargent's mother must have loved "his weak watery
Ulysses both supports Irish independence and satirizes the blood drained from her own." May Dedalus's love threatens to
forces dominating Ireland. Those forces include England, the pull Stephen down and drown him.
Catholic Church, and a fanatical Irish nationalism. Stephen
Some of the male characters in Ulysses impersonate
often refers to Ireland's being in servitude to Britain. He calls
maternity. Mulligan claims to be a "Fertiliser and Incubator," not
the maid's cracked mirror a "symbol of Irish art" because it is "a
of eggs or chicks, but of people, although it is not possible for
servant's" mirror. Stephen is irritated by Haines's remark about
him to become pregnant. In the "Circe" episode Bloom does
the wrongs done to Ireland: "It seems history is to blame."
become pregnant and gives birth to octuplets, outproducing all
However, Ulysses also satirizes a romantic attachment to Irish
other mothers in the novel. But Bloom is in some ways a
history's betrayed heroes, lost causes, and doomed self-
"womanly man" all the way through Ulysses, not only during the
sacrifice. The citizen endlessly ruminates on Ireland's heroes of
chaos in Nighttown. In the "Cyclops" episode Bloom is derided
the past, but he is holed up in a pub, grousing and drinking, not
for having something like a woman's menstrual period: "Lying
"working for the cause" as the narrator of "Cyclops" says.
up in the hotel ... once a month with headache like a totty
Rather than remain lost in history, Stephen wants to "awake"
[whore] with her courses [menstrual period]." Bloom later
from the "nightmare" that is history. Bloom also wants to be
confirms this in "Circe," thinking "Bit light in the head. Monthly
freed from that history—he contrasts "life" and "love" with
or effect of the other."
"force, hatred, history, all that." But is an escape from history
possible? Can Bloom find a world without violence and hate? The themes of femininity and maternity unite in Molly's lengthy
Everyone has a laugh at his expense when he preaches love in interior monologue in the "Penelope" episode. Molly speaks by
"Cyclops"—should the reader be laughing too? Joyce identifies the light of the moon, her speech unfettered by rules of
the central political problems facing Ireland throughout history, grammar, punctuation, or models of rhetoric. She scoffs at the
but does his writing here indicate he takes it all seriously? memory of the doctor who asks her about her vagina, a term
she mocks as "cochinchina," and she is unfazed confessing to
Stephen also resents the church for dominating Ireland. In
a priest. Science (the doctor) and religion (the priest) attempt
"Telemachus" Stephen says, "I am a servant of two masters ...
to interrogate Molly about her femininity, but Molly evades their
an English and an Italian." When asked to explain, he says the
questioning. She also shrugs off Bloom's sexual obsessions,
English master is "the imperial British state." The Italian master
unlike Bloom's cruel characterization of her in "Circe." In
is "the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church." Stephen
"Penelope" her words stream forth in a torrent just as Joyce
also parodies the Gospel of Matthew: "No man can serve two
associates her with flowing liquids, the Poulaphouca waterfall,
masters ... Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24).
and bodily secretions. Ulysses ultimately celebrates Molly,
"Mammon" was a common Aramaic word for wealth. This
maternity, and femininity with her last words strongly affirming
passage intends for readers of the Bible to conclude they
love: "yes I said yes I will Yes."
should serve only God, while Stephen's point is that he is stuck
serving both the church and the English state when he wants
to serve neither.

Death
Femininity and Maternity
An important theme in Ulysses is that death is universal,
ordinary, and extraordinary. Stephen still has the telegram he
received in Paris from his father, Simon. It is unusual, a
In Ulysses the characters celebrate, fear, and envy femininity
"curiosity to show." It should have said, "Mother dying come
and maternity. Stephen reflects on the universality of mothers'

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Ulysses Study Guide
home father," but, perhaps because of the French-speaking
telegraph operator, it said, "Nother dying come home
father"—as in, another is dying. Death happens to everyone, it
is universal and commonplace. But that does not assuage the
suffering of the survivors. Death strikes Stephen's mother, May
Goulding, and Bloom's 11-day-old son, Rudy. These deaths hurt
deeply and are anything but ordinary to those closest. But it
also happens to Paddy Dignam, a person few people will miss.
(Bloom keeps having to assure people he is in mourning but
not stricken by grief.) At the graveside ceremony for Dignam,
Bloom thinks, "How many! All these here once walked round
Dublin."
The universality of death makes it possible for some
characters to bond over mourning. Both Bloom and Stephen
are in mourning on June 16, 1904, wearing black clothes to
signify their recent losses. Stephen has lost a parent, and
although Bloom technically mourns Dignam on this day, deep
down he still mourns for his son. Stephen's experience shows
how grief oppresses the mourner. His mother's ghoulish image,
with its "loose brown graveclothes" and "faint odour of wetted
ashes," haunts his dreams. When he imagines his mother
conceiving him, it is the ghoul his father beds. In this way
mourning takes over Stephen's memory of May. Bloom, too,
appears to perpetually mourn both his son and his father,
Rudolph.
Exoticism
In Ulysses there is a fascination with people and locales seen
as exotic from the perspective of Dublin in 1904. Bloom's
imagination often turns to images from the Middle East. In the
"Circe" episode he sees Molly as "a handsome woman in
Turkish costume" in a "mirage of datepalms." He also takes
notice of an advertisement for tracts of land in a place called
Agendath Netaim: "To purchase vast sandy tracts from Turkish
government and plant with eucalyptus trees."
Joyce may have intended these Eastern and American images
as a contrast to the anti-Semitism of Haines and the bigotry of
the citizen, who want to keep Ireland from being "overrun." For
other characters it is Bloom who is exotic. Characters
continually emphasize Bloom's otherness, referring to him as
"Ikey Moses" or "of the tribe of Reuben." Stephen and Bloom,
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Narrative Styles 49
the Irishman and the son of a Hungarian Jewish immigrant,
become a symbolic father and son. In so doing they fulfill a
cosmopolitanism hinted at in "Circe": "Jewgreek is greekjew.
Extremes meet."
There are also the parallels, in "Aeolus" and elsewhere,
between the Jews in Egypt and the Irish under English rule
both to flatten out some of the exoticism attached to
Jewishness and to remind readers that, from an English
perspective, the Irish were a bit exotic and "other," especially
those who spoke Gaelic.
b Narrative Styles
Although James Joyce's Ulysses is justly famous as a
masterpiece of stream-of-consciousness writing, Joyce
employed many other literary genres and styles in
Ulysses—more than can be summarized here. The "Oxen of the
Sun" episode contains more than 20 different styles of English
prose, from translated Latin to the 18th-century essay and the
Gothic novel style. The "Sirens" episode takes the form of a
musical fugue. Mention must be made that, as in his first two
novels and again in Ulysses, Joyce explores traditional third-
person style writing and pushes it into unexplored territory.
Parody or mimicry is employed in at least three episodes. The
style dominates the first nine or so episodes. The cumulative
effect of all the styles is to destabilize the reader's sense that
any one style is sufficient or authoritative, and indeed, as the
novel progresses, the shifts in style offer new perspectives on
the narrative and the characters. The following discusses
some of the most inventive of Joyce's prose styles in Ulysses.
Stream of Consciousness
Stream of consciousness represents a character's thoughts
and sense impressions more directly than a traditional third-
person narrative style might. A first-person narrative style
differs because it views the world from an individual's
perspective, while stream of consciousness can transmit the
thoughts of any and all characters randomly in time allowing
writers great latitude on their exploration of the mind and
heart. Joyce exploits this to great effect. The way it works is
ordinarily a character's thoughts are framed so that the reader
understands they are thoughts, such as, "He thought to
Ulysses Study Guide
himself, 'This kidney is done to a turn.'" Or, less directly, it could
be written as, "He noticed the kidney was done to a turn." The
omniscient, omnipresent narrator reports the character's
thoughts and sensations. In stream of consciousness, the
narrator drops away: "Done to a turn."
In Joyce's use of stream of consciousness, the perspective
often shifts from character to narrator. For example, when
Bloom eats his kidney: "Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then
he cut away dies [cubes] of bread." It is a fluid, flexible style
that can incorporate trivial and not so trivial thoughts and
sensations freed from the necessity of narrative framework or
quotation marks.
Expressionist Drama
Drama is not usually a narrative style, but the play-script style
passages in "Circe" are meant to be read, not performed.
Expressionist drama emphasizes emotional experience rather
than events in the external world, and puppets and other props
play a part along with actors. Thus Bloom's button and
Stephen's hat also speak in "Circe." Joyce uses the form of
expressionist drama to reveal truths about Bloom's and
Stephen's inner worlds, echoing Freud's theories on sexuality,
repression, and the subconscious mind. Their interior worlds
could not be as effectively presented in narrative dialogue or
stream-of-consciousness writing. Stephen may have
repressed his need to banish his mother's ghost. Bloom may
not be aware of his sexual attraction to cuckoldry underneath
all the pain it causes him. Joyce made full use of the form to
reveal the interior worlds of the novel's central characters.
More than objects as props, characters change form, ghosts
and ghouls appear and speak, inner dreams and inner
struggles are staged and directed for optimum dramatic effect
utilizing a parade of characters readers have gotten to know.
At the end of "Circe" readers have come to a deeper
understanding and appreciation of Stephen and Bloom.
Interior Monologue
The terms stream of consciousness and interior monologue are
often used interchangeably, although they have different
origins in the history of literature. The first stream-of-
consciousness novel, Pointed Roofs, was written by Dorothy
Richardson and published in 1915. Interior monologue first
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Narrative Styles 50
appeared in 1887 with the publication of Les Lauriers sont
coupés (We'll to the Woods No More) by Édouard Dujardin.
Generally, the technique creates an effect similar to the
dramatic monologue or soliloquy in plays.
In the "Penelope" episode Joyce uses interior monologue to
represent Molly's thoughts directly. There are no quotation
marks and no interruptions by a narrator; it's almost as if Molly
were giving a soliloquy onstage in a play. Her interior
monologue moves through the story of her whole life—girlhood,
her marriage to Bloom, her affair with Boylan, and everything in
between. The style overcomes her physical limitation as it
ranges and flows from present to past, Dublin to Gibraltar.
(Molly's interior monologue has been adapted for stage and
screen. One well-known example stars the Irish actress
Fionnula Flanagan in James Joyce's Women.) Molly's speech
lacks punctuation, correct spelling, and proper grammar; her
thoughts freely make connections. The unruly style of her
speech resonates with her unruly passions.
Catechism
Catechism is a form of religious instruction that summarizes
doctrine for new members. Often it takes the form of questions
and answers, a style Joyce parodies in the "Ithaca" episode.
Although there are religious overtones, the point of Joyce's
catechism parody is to induct believers into the church of
Ulysses, rather than to use Ulysses to win converts to the
church.
Unlike a philosophical dialogue, in which Plato might question
other citizens, a catechism always seems to be authored by
one mind or voice. The questioner and answerer in Ulysses is
the same remote narrator or "arranger" of the text. Even
though episodes, and especially "Ithaca," sometimes detail the
movements and specific moment-to-moment thoughts of
characters on a day in Dublin in 1904, Ulysses is not a story to
be read to find out what happens. Like a catechism, the one-
person discourse in "Ithaca" is something to be learned,
perhaps even memorized. Events do not unfold in simple linear
sequence, first to last. Instead of telling a story, it presents a
tangle of doctrines and analyses, as well as snippets of poetry
and song. Catechism is studied, recited, analyzed, and taught
rather than read or listened to once. "Ithaca" is not a story to
be told so much as a ritual to be repeated.
Ulysses Study Guide Suggested Reading 51

Parallax e Suggested Reading

Parallax is a word that appears throughout Ulysses, most often
Blamires, Harry. The New Bloomsday Book: a Guide Through
uttered or thought by Bloom, who seems to be wrestling with
Ulysses. Routledge, 1996.
two distinct viewpoints with which to understand himself, his
life, and his relationships. Joyce makes use of the device both Gifford, Don, and Robert J. Seidman. Ulysses Annotated: Notes
in juxtapositions of characters, their different perspectives of for James Joyce's Ulysses. U of California P, 1989.
the same event, and juxtapositions of symbols to represent
two or more narrative themes. Parallax in science and in Kidd, John. "The Scandal of Ulysses." New York Review of
literature speak to the same phenomenon: an object or event Books, 30 June 1988.
viewed from different perspectives will result in different
Maddox, Brenda. "Joyce, Nora and the Word Known to All
received views of that object or event. To obtain any
Men." New York Times, 15 May 1988.
understanding of reality, all perspectives must be collated,
compared; scientists call it triangulation. In the case of Bloom's Rossman, Charles. "The New 'Ulysses': The Hidden
thinking, he needs to reconcile his understanding, especially Controversy." New York Review of Books, 8 Dec. 1988.
his relationship to Molly, through the lenses of science and
spirituality. He tries out the former but soon realizes a purely
conceptual view gives him a limited view. Throughout the story,
Bloom seems preoccupied with the workings of gadgets, trivial
and not so trivial facts of nature, and even parallax, which he
says, "I never exactly understood." Parallax becomes for him a
spiritual endeavor through an invocation of belief in God to
quell disorder in his life. In the former he equates Molly with
celestial bodies so as to come to grips with his troubled
marriage and Molly's adulterous behavior. This gives him an
insufficient answer. So he connects Molly with the "everlasting
virgin," "a beacon ever to the storm-crossed heart of man."

Parallax comes to the fore again in the penultimate episode,

"Ithaca," opening with parallactic questions such as: What
parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning? Did
Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their
respective like and unlike reactions to experience? Were their
views on some points divergent? In the explications the
narrator catalogs both their convergences and divergences in
perspective touching on myriad factors of concern in the daily
lives of ordinary people. Joyce seems to be, like Bloom,
attempting to understand his two protagonists through the
lens of didactic or instructional discourse. Arriving at the end of
the discourse with few conclusions, he presents us with Molly's
perspective in "Penelope," wholly unscientific, unruly,
emotional, reactive, chaotic. It seems that all the triangulations
Joyce attempts give us no certain or complete answers, only
more questions.

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