This presentation goes into detail about James Joyce novel Ulysses-with chapter summary, parallels with Homer's Odyssey, and a episode anlysis.

1. Biography, Significance, and Trial
“I've put in so many enigmas
and puzzles that it will keep the
professors busy for centuries
arguing over what I meant, and
that's the only way of insuring
one's immortality.”
James Joyce
James Joyce was born Rathgar,
Dublin on February 2, 1882.
He attended the prestigious
Clongowes Wood College in
County Kildare, and, from
1893 to 1898, he attended the
reputable Belvedre College, a
Catholic day school in Dublin.
Joyce eloped with Nora
Barnacle on October 1904, they
had two children together
Giorgio and Lucia. Joyce
originally fled his home of
Ireland, and Joyce and his
family lived in Paris, Zurich,
and Trieste. Joyce died in 1941
of undiagnosed duodenal ulcer.
James Joyce’s Ulysses
#thebullockbefriendingbard Genius or Peddler of Obscenity - 06 16, 1904

2. Biography, Significance, and Trial Cont…
•“The artist, like the God of
the creation, remains within
or behind or beyond or
above his handiwork,
invisible, refined out of
existence, indifferent, paring
his fingernails.”
•James Joyce
Ulysses was first serialized
in the American journal
The Little Review, but in
1921 a court banned it as
obscene. On December 6,
1933 Judge John M.
Woolsey lifted the ban on
Ulysses.-
Ulysses is one of the most
vitally human books every
written, one of flesh and
blood, pain, passion,
music, laughter, a great
symphony of human
voices.
All activities in Ulysses
happen in a single day!
James Joyce’s Ulysses
#Ifearthosebigwordswhichmakeussounhappy Genius or Peddler of Obscenity - 06 16, 1904

3. Introduction: Structure, and Main Characters
Structure:
Ulysses is divided into 3
parts:
Part 1: Telemachiad Ch. 1-3
Part 2: The Wanderings of
Ulysses Ch. 4-15
Part 3: The Homecoming Ch.
16-18
Ulysses is a Epic Narrative:
Episodic
Ulysses utilizes a literary
device called Stream of
Consciousness or interior
monologue: An exact,
verbatim transcript of what a
character is thinking.
3 Main Characters:
Leopold Bloom: Joyce’s 20th
century Odysseus-Ulysses figure.
Descended from Hungarian Jew but
does not practice Judaism. Loves to
eat and satisfy his bodily needs.
Haunted by the memory of his
Suicide father and deceased son.
Intellectually curious.
Stephen Dedalus: Joyce’s
fictional younger self. Brilliant, witty,
brooding, bibulous, and complicated
to the point of self-contradiction. He
yearns to make his name as a writer
Molly Bloom: Wife of Leopold-
uninhibited monologue at the end proves
her contradictory. Hours after her
adulterous tryst, she rapturously recalls
her first lovemaking with Bloom.

4. Telemachus
Martello Tower: 8AM
Theology, White, gold, Heir,
Narrative (Young)
In Homer’s Odyssey: Telemachus is
moved to seek news for his long-
absent father. Suitors have occupied
his father’s house and are pressing his
mother to marry.
In Joyce’s Ulysses: Stephen Dedalus
(Telemachus) a fictionalized version
of Joyce’s younger self, a 22-year old
schoolteacher of Roman Catholic
background, lofty intellect, and
brooding, brilliant wit, Buck Mulligan
(Antinous), an Irish medical student
of mocking wit and rollicking
sensuality and Haines (Eurymachos),
a condescending Englishman, all are
having breakfast at the Martello
Tower A year has passed since the
death of Stephen’s mother. Mulligan
goes swimming, Stephen leaves for
the school where he teaches. web
Stephen and Telemachus share a
sense of usurpation in this chapter.
Buck Mulligan mockingly Usurps the
role to priest and father and threatens
to kill Stephens literary ambitions,
confirms his servitude to the Roman
Catholic church and British
Imperialism.
Haines embodies England’s
usurpation of Ireland, he is studying
Ireland as an anthropologist might
study a tribe of aborigines. In
expecting bacon for his breakfast, he
recalls the ravenous suitors of
Homer’s Epic. The image of Ireland
as a desiccated wasteland, seen in the
visit of the old milk women, is a
developing motif in Ulysses. Stephen
is like Telemachus living amongst
enemies that are trying to undermine
him.

5. Nestor
Dalkey School:
10AM
In Homer’s Odyssey: Nestor is the
wise old king of Pylos who fought
beside Ulysses in the Trojan War
and whom Telemachus visits in
quest for news of his father.
In Joyce’s Ulysses: Stephen teaches
history (death of Pyrrhus another
victim of usurpation) and
literature, helps a boy named
Sargent with his work; gets his pay
from the Schoolmaster, Mr. Deasy
(who like Nestor, a tamer of horses,
Deasy is an old man with a special
interest in racehorses. Mr. Deasy-
militant anti-Semitic, and blind to
his own hypocrisy ask Stephen to
deliver a letter about hoof-and-
mouth disease to be publish in the
newspaper.
Deasy’s review of Irish history is
vitiated by his ignorance and
staunchly pro-British sympathies.
Deasy blames women for the evils
of history, and his views are
specious as those of Haines, who, in
“Telemachus”, maintained timidly
that history, not the English, was to
blame for Ireland’s troubles.
Homer often would satirize
Nestor’s character through his
ponderous verbiage, similar to Mr.
Deasy’s nonsensical and
irreconcilable talk. In ignorantly
asserting that Ireland never
persecuted the Jews because “she
never let them in,” Deasy
unwittingly anticipates the
appearance of Leopold Bloom.
History, Brown, Horse, Narrative Catechism (personal) “I Paid My Way”
Ulysses

6. NEWS
Proteus
Sanydymount Strand
11AM:
In Homer’s Odyssey:
•Menelaus tells Telemachus how
he ambushed Proteus, catching
the god by surprise, and then hung
on to him as Proteus rapidly
transformed himself into a series
of different creatures and objects.
By retaining his hold throughout
these metamorphoses, Menelaus
was able to compel Proteus, as a
condition of release, to reveal how
Menelaus should placate the gods
so they would allow him to return
home.
The theme of this chapter is
metamorphosis: transformation,
shape-shifting, scene changing.
As Stephen walks along the beach, he
watches a dog behaving like a
succession of various animals, and he
thinks about other shifts in form and
place: about his own doglike face,
about the radical transformation we
undergo in passing from birth through
life to death, about his father’s gift of
mimicry, and about the multiple
personalities of the sea—a mighty
mother fully capable of drowning her
children . JH
Stephens thoughts occasionally turn
back to his mother and the remorse he
feels for not praying over her.
In James Joyce’s Ulysses
Stephen walks in solitude along Sandymount strand, SE
of Dublin. Almost the entire episode is his reverie-
stream of consciousness as he walks. He thinks of an
imaginary visit to his uncle’s house, some events from
his days in Paris.
Stephen’s initial problems in the chapter are
philosophical: because all things are bound in
inescapable change (“ineluctable modality”)
Philology, Green, Tide, Monologue (Male)
“INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT
LEAST THAT IF NO more, thought through my eyes.”

7. Calypso
Bloom’s House (7 Eccles
Street):
8AM
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Calypso is the goddess who
held Odysseus captive on her
island of Ogygia for more than
seven years. At the intercession
of Athena, Zeus compels
Calypso to allow Odysseus to
depart the island and to resume
his journey to Ithaca.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish
the inner organs of beasts and fowls.”
So begins the chapter introducing the
hero of the story Leopold Bloom. The
Setting is Bloom’s house and
neighborhood. Bloom arises, goes out
and prepares breakfast for
Molly and
himself (Molly is still in bed),
and later goes to the privy
behind the house and defecates.
Molly receives a letter from
Blazes Boylan.
Blooms short trip to the Pork
butcher becomes something
like a Ulyssian adventure
when he ogles a sexy girl at the
butcher shop and when an ad
for a model farm in Palestine
makes him mentally travel to
the Middle East and ultimately
to the Dead Sea, “a barren
land.” Joyce stresses Bloom’s
acute awareness of the
sensations of taste and touch.
“Those girls, those girls, Those
lovely seaside girls.”
James Joyce’s Ulysses
Kidney, Economics, Orange, Nymph, Narrative (Mature) JUNE 16, 1904

8. The Lotus-Eaters
SE Dublin:
10am
The bath, genitals, botany, chemistry,
Eucharist, narcissism
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus and his men encounter the
Lotus-Eaters, people who live in a
somnambulant state of forgetfulness
as a result of eating the narcotic lotus
flower. Odysseus shipmates eat the
flower and become lethargic and
Odysseus has to compel them back to
their ships by force. Determined.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Bloom walks along the street, picks
up a general delivery letter for him
(under the name Henry Flower) from
a women named Martha Clifford,
meets Bantam Lyons, stops in All
Hallows church, stops at the pharma-
Cist’s shop to buy soap and
order some cream for Molly,
and then heads toward the
Turkish baths, near Trinity
College.
Like Ulysses men Bloom is
tempted in various ways to
forget his devotion to his wife
and home. He thinks about
“Flowers and idleness” and
fantasizes about the laziness of
life in the Far East. He forgets
his house key and several other
things. He imagines that gelded
horses might be happily free of
worries. He sees Roman
Catholic communicants “safe
in the arms of kingdom come.”
“ A flower. I think it’s a. A
yellow with flattened petals.”

9. Hades
Outside Paddy Dignam
house in Sandymount:
11am
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus is instructed by Circe to
seek counsel from the seer Tiresias,
in Hades. Tiresias tells Odysseus the
Poseidon is preventing him from
returning immediately to Ithaca.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Bloom and others attend the
funeral of Paddy Dignam. The
funeral carriage travels from
Dignam’s home in Sandymount,
south of Dublin, to Glasnevin
Cemetery in north Dublin. The
occupants of Bloom’s carriage are
Bloom, Simon Dedalus, Martin
Cunningham, and Mr. Power. At the
Cemetery Bloom and the others see
Parnell’s grave and observe the
interment of Paddy Dignam. In the
carriage the men converse abut Jews
and suicide; after arriving, Bloom hears
the service read over Paddy, then walks
about the cemetery thinking about
death and those who have died.
Various characters in this chapter
correspond to figures in the Hades
episode of the Odyssey. Paddy Dignam,
who drank himself to death, is the
counterpart of Homer’s Elpenor. The
shade of Agamemnon, the Greek king
killed by his wife and her lover, is
recalled by the grave of Charles Stewart
Parnell, Ireland’s uncrowned king, who
was politically destroyed by the
revelation of his affair with a married
women. Additionally, this chapter re-
creates the action of the Homeric
episode. E.g. Ulysses sails northwest to
reach the land of Cimmerians, so do the
mourners travel by carriage to a
cemetery northwest of central Dublin.
Ulysses returns to the world of the
living , so does Bloom walk back out
through the cemetery gates.
The Graveyard, Heart, Religion, White, Black, Caretaker, Incubism “How life Begins”
Ulysses

10. NEWS
Aeolus
The Newspaper:
12pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Aeolus, the god of the winds,
attempting to help Odysseus reach his
homeland, Ithaca, by confining all
adverse winds in a bag. Odysseus’s
crew, seeking booty that they assume
Odysseus has hidden from them,
open the bag and release the winds,
causing their ship to be blown back to
the island of Aeolia. When Odysseus
returns a second time to ask for
assistance, he is rebuffed and sent
away by Aeolus.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
The scene is the office of the
Freeman’s Journal In downtown
Dublin near the General Post Office
Most of the conversation is among
Ned Lambert, Myles Crawford
(editor of the paper), professor
MacHugh, Bloom, and Stephen.
Early in the episode Bloom comes
into the office making
arrangements for an ad for a client,
Alexander Keyes; later Stephen
comes in to give them the letter
about hoof-and-mouth disease
which Deasy gave him earlier. As
they adjourn to a pub, Stephen tells
a story about two old Dublin
women who climb to the top of
Nelson’s Pillar, a Dubln landmark
(the brief, sketchy story seems
similar in subject and tone to some
in Dubliners).
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
The imagery of windiness embodied in the garrulous dialogue of
these loafers is enhanced by such seemingly mundane actions as
the opening and closing of doors. The counterpart of Aeolus in this
chapter is Myles Crawford. Crawford at first sends Bloom off to
secure the renewal of an ad for a pub. When Bloom returns to ask
Crawford’s help in closing the deal for a renewal, Crawford blows
him away. Like Ulysses, Bloom is blown off course just as he's about
to reach his goal.
The winds are also compared to rhetoric of the journalism world: speech
just being blown this way and that without really being controlled or
carefully crafted. “That mantles the vista to irradiate her silver
effulgence.”
Lungs, Rhetoric, Red, Editor, Enthymemic
-”Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles
Crawford said, throwing out his arms for emphasis.
Tell him that straight from the stable.”

11. Lestrygonians
The Lunch (Davy
Byrne’s pub:
1pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus describes a frightening
encounter with the cannibalistic
Lestrygonians. With the exception of
the ship commanded by Odysseus,
the entire fleet is trapped in a bay by
Antiphates, the king of the
Lestrygonians. The ships are
destroyed, and the men are devoured.
Only Odysseus and his crew escape.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Bloom walks along the streets
south of the river, deciding where
to eat lunch. In the course of his
walk he meets and talk with Mrs.
Breen, sees constables walking
Indian file, goes into the Burton
restaurant but doesn’t like the look
of it, and finally goes on to Davy
Byrne’s pub where he has a cheese
sandwich and a glass of burgundy.
While in Byrne’s pub he talks with
Nosy Flynn. After his meal Bloom
walks toward the National Library,
sees Boylan, and ducks into the
National Museum.
Cannibalism takes the form of
animalistic voracity: men wolfing
their food at the Burton restaurant.
Repelled by this Lestrygonian
savagery, Bloom goes instead to a
“moral pub,” while eating it evokes
vivid memories of his first
lovemaking with Molly. Talking with
other men leads him back to the
painful subject of Blazes Boylan,
who recalls Antiphates. Along with
thoughts of God the devour, Bloom
feels almost eaten alive by his
anxiety.
“Men, men, men.
“Perched on high stools by the bar,
hats shoved back, at the tables calling
for more bread no charge, swilling,
wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their
eyes bulging, wiping wetted
moustaches.
James Joyce’s Ulysses
Esophagus, architecture, constables, peristaltic JUNE 16, 1904

12. Scylla and Charybdis
The National Library of
Ireland:
2pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
The six-headed monster Scylla and the
whirlpool Charybdis. In choosing to avoid
the more unpredictable and far more
dangerous hazard, the Wandering Rocks,
Odysseus confronts instead the twin
challenges of Scylla and Charybdis
between which Odysseus must navigate
after leaving Circe’s island. Rather than
risk the possible loss of the entire ship by
sailing near the whirlpool, Charybdis, he
elects to sail close to the lair of the
ferocious Scylla, although in doing so
Odysseus intentionally sacrifices six of
his crew whom the sic-headed monster
will seize and devour.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Stephen presents his theory of Hamlet
and Shakespeare to several people
gathered in the National Library. The
main characters Are Stephen, John
Eglinton, AE, Lyster (a librarian, a
Quaker), and Richard Best. During the
episode Bloom comes in looking for
back files of a newspaper to get a design
for the ad he is working on, and Buck
Mulligan comes in and listens to part of
Stephen’s presentation.
At one point Bloom catches the eye of
Mulligan, who scornfully points him
out to Stephen as a wandering Jew with
sexual designs on Stephen. But insofar
as Bloom steers a middle way between
sensuality and intellectualism, he
reenacts Ulysses’s passage between
Scylla and Charybdis—and offers
Stephen a model to follow
The motifs of the sheer, steadfast rock of Scylla
and the restless whirlpool of Charybdis , a sea
of troubles, are utilized in a symbolic sense in
this episode. The stability of Dogma, of
Aristotle and of Shakespeare’s Stratford is
contrasted with the whirlpool of Mysticism,
Platonism, the London of Elizabethan times.
Shakespeare, Jesus and Socrates, like Ulysses,
the man of balanced genius, pass bravely out,
though not unscathed, from between these
Ulysses
Brain, literature, Stratford, London, dialectic - Since 1904

13. Wandering Rocks
The Streets:
3pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
The group of drifting boulders that
Odysseus avoids when after leaving the
island of the enchantress Circe, he
chooses instead to sail his ship in the
direction of the monster Scylla and the
whirlpool Charybdis.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
This episode consists of nineteen short
section (18 plus a coda) showing brief
scenes of Dublin streets and houses.
Threading through most of these scenes
is the vice-regal procession. Several of
the scenes depict major characters, but
many depict minor ones. There is much
intersection of the scenes with each
other. The
scenes include Bloom at a bookseller’s stand;
Molly throwing money to a one-legged sailor;
Stephen talking to his sister, Dilly; and a scene
at the Dedalus’ home.
The most probable explanation of this legend is
that which explains the “wandering” or
clashing of the rocks as an optical illusion.
Joyce, however, is having fun at the reader’s
expense in this chapter because, to read
Ulysses, the reader must pass through both the
treacherous rocks and the labyrinth of the
National Library, with Stephen’s complex
intellectual expositions at it center.
Mr. Bloom excels his great precursor, for he
accepts a supplementary adventure which the
latter declined.
The personages who figure in this episode are
themselves victims of illusion, and many forms
of mistake are illustrated, arising out of
inattention, false inference, optical illusion,
malidentification, etc.
“From its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom
Devan’s office Poddle river hung out in fealty a
tongue of liquid sewage”
Blood, mechanics, conglomeration of the citizens, labyrinth June 16, 1904
Ulysses

14. NEWS
Sirens
The Concert in the
Ormond Hotel:
4pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
A man-eating
creatures, half women and half fish,
recline upon rocks and sing to Odysseus
and his crew, tempting them toward
shipwreck and death. Having been warned
of this danger by the enchantress Circe,
Odysseus has plugged the ears of his
crewmen with wax so that they will not
hear the Siren’s song; but, curious about
he nature of their voices, Odysseus has
had himself tied securely to the mast of
the ship and has ordered his men not to
release him under any conditions until the
ships have passed the Sirens’ rocks.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Bloom stops by the
restaurant of the Ormond Hotel for a
snack; in the bar of the Hotel two
barmaids flirt with several men, including
Ben Dollard, Simon Dedalus, and Father
Cowley. Bloom sits with Richie
Goulding, Stephen’s uncle (his mother’s
brother). The men in the bar sing songs
from popular operas while Bloom eats
liver. During his stay at the Ormond
restaurant he answers the letter from
Martha and thinks about Molly’s adultery
with Blazes Boylan, which he knows is
taking place. (this complex episode in
which music plays so important a role is
structured somewhat like a fugue, in the
opening 1 ½ pages Joyce presents motifs
that reappear throughout the episode.
In James Joyce Ulysses:
In this chapter the Sirens are a pair of sexy barmaids at the bar of the
Ormond Hotel, Like Ulysses, Bloom is tempted by the seductive power of
music, in particular by songs of love and sentimental nationalism, but he
resists its enchanting power and critically observes its narcotic effect on
those around him.
Just as Ulysses enlist the help of sailors, whose ears are stuffed with wax,
Bloom asks a deaf waiter to open the door between the restaurant and the
bar so that he can hear the music.
Bloom shares Ulysses’s determination to see and hear everything in the
course of his travels. E.g. he enjoys the “glorious tone” of Simon Dedalus’s
voice. He can recognize a minuet when he hears it on the piano.
Ear, music, barmaids, fuga per canonem
“Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining
a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no
more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in
sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear”

15. Cyclops
The Tavern:
5pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus and his men land in Sicily and
begin to explore the island. When they
arrive at the cave of Polyphemus, the
Cyclops (one-eyed monster), they are
taken prisoner, and the Cyclops eats six of
the men. Odysseus tricks the Cyclops into
getting drunk, puts out his eye with the
sharpened end of a stake, and escapes to
sea with the remainder of his men. From
the apparent safety of his boat Odysseus
smugly mocks the blinded Cyclops, who
hurls a boulder at them as their ship sails
away.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Setting is Barney Kiernan’s pub, near
the Four Courts, the legal center of
Dublin. Most of this episode is told by
an unnamed narrator, but the episode
is interrupted frequently by long
paragraphs in the epic style, or long
catalogues, or by long detailed
descriptions of such simple objects as a
handkerchief. The topic of
conversation is Ireland and the Irish,
and the main speakers, in addition to
the narrator, are the Citizen, Lenehan,
Alf Bergan, O’Molloy, and Ned
Lambert. Because some of the men
believe Bloom gave a racing tip to
Bantam Lyons in the “Lotus-eaters”
episode (Throwaway), the men in the
pub mistakenly think Bloom has won
money on a long shot. Bloom comes to
words with them, so that the Citizen
chases Bloom out and throws at him
biscuit can, from Irish biscuits, of
course.
In this chapter, the counterpart of the
Cyclops is a myopic, rabidly nationalistic,
virulently anti-Semitic drunkard known
simply as the citizen. Caught in a pub, which
takes the place of Homer’s cave, Bloom is
scorned for his Jewishness by the citizen and
the narrator, but in a rare moment of self-
assertion, he denounces the persecution of
his race. Just as Ulysses makes his escape
while taunting the Cyclops, so does Bloom
get away in the very act of infuriating the
citizen by defiantly proclaiming that even
Christ was a Jew.
“Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like
James Joyce’s Ulysses
Muscle, Politics, Fenian, Gigantism JUNE 16, 1904

16. Nausicaa
The Rocks (Sandymount
Stand):
8pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Nausicaa and her handmaids have gone to
the beach with laundry from the palace.
There she comes across the exhausted
Odysseus, who, after leaving Calyps’s
island on his way back to Ithaca, has been
shipwrecked and washed ashore on a
beach in the land of the Phaeacians.
Nausikaa promises to give Odysseus her
protection, and she brings him to the court
of her father, the king.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Two or Three hours have passed. Setting
is the same beach where Stephen walked
in “Proteus.” The first half of this episode
is in the style of the nineteenth century
popular romance. The main characters are
Gertie Macdowell, Edy Boardman, Cissy
Caffrey, and Cissy’s two little brothers,
Tommy and Jacky. While the children
play ball and squabble, Gerty daydreams
about the romantic life she might lead.
She sees a dark gentleman close by and
exhibitionistcally exposes her
underclothes to him. About mid-way
through the episode, the perspective shifts
to Bloom’s point-of-view for bloom is the
dark gentlemen. Bloom voyeuristically
observes Gerty and masturbates. After
thinking on Gerty for a while, Bloom falls
asleep.
Gerty (Joyce’s Nausicaa) aids Bloom by
enticing him into the sexual respite
provided by auto-eroticism, an act which
he has been postponing until now. She
also parallels the unmarried Nausicaa of
Homer because marriage is much on
Gerty’s mind, especially after her breakup
with her steady boyfriend, Reggie Wylie (
a parallel here with Bloom’s “loss” of
Molly).
“And then a rocket sprang and bang shot
blind blank and O! then the Roman candle
burst and it was like a sigh of O! and
everyone cried O!”
Joyce’s Ulysses
Eye, Nose, Painting, Grey, Blue, Virgin, Tumescence, Detumescence - Since 1904

17. Oxen of The Sun
The Holles Street
Maternity Hospital:
10pm
In Homer’s Odyssey:
After leaving Circe’s island and passing
by first the Sirens and then Scylla and
Charybdis, Odysseus and his shipmates
land on the island of the sun god, Helios,
to spend the night. Knowing well the
potential for retribution they could face
for annoying Helios, Odysseus makes the
crew swear that they will not harm the
god’s cattle grazing there. Unfortunately,
adverse weather strands the men on the
island and eventually their supplies run
low. When Odysseus goes off to pray, his
crew takes advantage of their leader’s
absence, slaughters the animals, and feasts
upon them. As punishment for this
sacrilege, when the ship leaves the island,
Zeus hurls a lighting bolt killing all of the
crew save Odysseus.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Setting is the Holles Street maternity hospital.
The style of this episode apparently traces the
development of English writing from Anglo-
Saxon to the contemporary revival sermon and
also the development of a fetus. The episode is
at times obscure and hard to follow, but the
scene is the maternity hospital where Mrs.
Purefoy is about to give birth. Bloom goes to
see how she is doing and there meets Lenehan,
a drunken Stephen, and a group of riotous
medical students. Bloom joins them at the
invitation of Dr. Dixon, who recently treated
Bloom for a bee sting, but Bloom does not join
in their drinking and mockery. After the
announcement that Mrs. Purefoy’s baby has
been born, the group adjourns to Burke’s for
more drinks, at Stephen’s suggestion. Bloom,
fearing that Stephen may get into trouble,
follows along to oversee.
Taking the killing of the oxen as a crime
against fecundity, Joyce constructs a
chapter about childbearing. Bloom sits with
a group of men talking about lechery and
contraception-crimes against fecundity.
Womb, medicine, white, mothers, embryonic development June 16, 1904
Ulysses

18. June 16, 1904
Circe The Brothel:
Midnight
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus gives an account of his
adventure with Circe, the witch who
through magic transforms Odysseus's
crew into swine. Her magic fails to effect
a change in Odysseus because of the
protective herb (identified by the Greek
word moly, Odysseus was given by the
god Hermes. Eventually, Odysseus
triumphs over Circe and forces her to
restore his men to their human forms.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Setting is the brothel district of Dublin.
This, by far the longest episode in the
novel and clearly the climactic one, takes
place mainly in the brothel run by
Bella Cohen. The main characters are Bloom,
Stephen, Lynch, the three prostitutes Zoe,
Florry, and Kitty, and the “whoremistress,”
Bella Cohen. For many pages of the episode we
move into subconscious mind of Stephen and
Bloom. Hallucinations that must take place
almost instantaneously are developed for 12-15
pages. As the episode opens, Bloom is
searching for Stephen in the Dublin brothel
district. He finds him at Bella Cohen’s. During
their flirtations with the girls, Bloom’s and
Stephen’s hallucinations bring back many of
the characters and incidents of earlier in the
day. Stephen finally breaks the chimney of a
gas lamp and runs out. Bloom pays for it and
follows him. Out in the street Stephen very
passively becomes involved in an argument
with two British soldiers and one of them hits
him and knocks him down. Bloom comes up
and ask the aid of the undertaker, Corny
Kelleher, to disperse the crowd and satisfy the
police. Bloom helps Stephen away.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
The counterpart of Circe in this chapter is Bella Cohen,. When Stephen goes there
with a friend named Lynch, Bloom follows them in hopes of rescuing Stephen
from further dissipation. But when a whore named Zoe takes Bloom’s potato (his
moly) as he enters the brothel, he becomes helpless against all the fantasies that
swarm through his mind—including the hallucinated experience of being turned
into a pig.
We realize anew that Bloom is a marvelous composite of all the elements that
make up mankind. His capacity for wonder and beauty is dramatically revealed
here in the harrowing apparition of little Rudy, the Lamb of the World.
Locomotor Apparatus, Magic, Whore, Hallucination
“Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following
darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling
masonry.”

19. Eumaeus
The Cab Shelter:
1am
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Odysseus, disguised as an old beggar,
arrives at the hut of his faithful servant
Eumaus, a swineherd, whose hospitality
provides emotional as well as physical
comfort to the weary traveler. Odysseus
made up as the old beggar, spins yarns
about his travels and about associations
with Odysseus that delight the old servant.
It is only his son, Telemachus, that the
putative beggar reveals his true identity,
and together Odysseus and the young man
plot revenge against the suitors who are
importuning Penelope and despoiling their
property.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
Setting is a cabman’s shelter (a pub kept
open late for cabmen) near Butt Bridge.
The proprietor of the pub is a man the
customers believe to be Skin-the-Goat,
who was accused of being part of an Irish
nationalist group that murdered two
high-ranking English officials in Phoenix
Park in Dublin in 1882. Bloom takes the
boozy, befuddled Stephen there and tries
to buy him coffee and a bun. They sit and
listen to the talk of an old sailor who has
travelled the world. The style of this
episode is lethargic; it uses almost every
trite expression, cliché, periphrasis, and
verbosity imaginable.
Deception plays a prominent role in
Ulysses, for in each instance the narrative
underscores how easily both language and
appearances can conceal, as well as
reveal, true identity.
Eumaeus appears as the keeper of a
cabman’s shelter where Bloom and
Stephen go to talk and refresh themselves
after Bloom guides Stephen out of
Nighttown.
Many scholars thought that the Eumaeus
episode, with its emphasis on clichés and
exhausted language, reflect the fatigue that
Joyce must have felt after the enormous effort
of composing the Circe episode. Now scholars
have come to see that the trite and hackneyed
dialogue is yet another instance of Joyce’s
virtuosity as a writer.
Joyce’s Ulysses
Nerves, Navigation, Sailors, Narrative (old) - Since 1904

20. Ithaca
The House:
2am
In Homer’s Odyssey:
Joyce took the title of the Ithaca episode
from the name of the native land of
Odysseus. This choice underscores the
theme of homecoming that dominates this
chapter. For the Greek hero, returning to
Ithaca means both the successful
completion of his 20-year odyssey and the
restoration of his authority at home, which
was threatened by the suitors for his wife,
Penelope. Odysseus reaffirmation of
authority, reunion with his wife and son,
and repossession of his lands.
In Joyce’s Ulysses:
This episode is presented in the form of
long, meticulously detailed and
technically phrased questions and
answers. Bloom takes Stephen home to 7
Eccles Street, where the two men have
cocoa, talk, and urinate together outside.
Bloom offers to let Stephen stay the night
, but he declines.
In form, this a chapter of scientifically
detached inquisition, made of nothing but
questions and answers. Rigorously
didactic, it recalls the format of the
Roman Catholic catechism or of
nineteenth-century scientific textbooks. It
speaks with authority, exhaustively
answering almost every question you
might have about the characters in this
book, especially Stephen and Bloom. It
offers a historical record of facts that
neither a journalist nor historian would
think worthy of recording but that are
nonetheless significant in this novel. The
simple act of turning a faucet prompts two
enormous passages on the topic of water
as a global phenomenon. We are
reminded that in this novel, the
implications of any one character or
action can be made to spread out almost
infinitely in space and time.
“He thought that he thought he was a jew
whereas he knew that he knew that he
knew he was not”
Joyce’s Ulysses
Skeleton, Science, Comets, Catechism (impersonal) - Since 1904

21. Penelope
Molly and Leopold
Bloom’s Bed:
2AM
In Homer’s Odyssey:
The Penelope episode takes its name from the
wife of Odysseus who waited 20 years for her
husband’s return from the Trojan War. More
specifically, the chapter’s title calls to mind
book 23 of The Odyssey, in which Penelope is
awakened and told that her husband has
returned and killed all of the suitors who. were
occupying her house. Penelope takes a cautious
approach to this strange man who has suddenly
appeared in her home. She demands that he
verify his identity by answering a question
about the position of their bed known only to
her husband. When he replies correctly, they
are finally reunited. In Joyce’s Ulysses:
All of this forty-five page episode is Molly Bloom’s
stream of consciousness as she lies awake after
Bloom comes to bed. The episode is presented in
eight unpunctuated sentences.
As she lies in bed Molly thinks of her singing
engagement, wonders what Bloom has been
doing, thinks about her lovers and especially
about Boylan’s visit that afternoon, remembers
her first meeting with Bloom, and drifts toward
sleep.
But Joyce has an aim here. If you take a look at the
1909 letters, you'll see that in the blink of an eye
Joyce will go from talking about Nora as if she were
the Virgin Mary to telling her in graphic detail what
he wants to do to her in bed. What he is trying to do is
to explode a common preconception about what
women have to be. Part of the typical feminist critique
of masculine culture is that it is founded on the
division of "woman/ mother/ prostitute"
(Froula, Modernism's Body, 88). Meaning that the
only way women could attain respectable social status
was by marrying a man or by being pure. Joyce is
here trying to lasso this prejudice against women, to
reveal Molly as a virgin (in the sense that Bloom
worships her as if she were a goddess), a mother, and
a "prostitute." As with Bloom, you can't come to an
easy judgment about Molly. You have to accept all of
her, good and bad, attractive and ugly, saintly and
debased.
“I put my arms around him yes and drew him down
on me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and
his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will
Yes.
Flesh, Earth, Monologue (female) June 17, 1904
Ulysses

22. Bibliography
Fargnoli, N. A. (2006). James Joyce A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York, NY: Facts On File, Inc.
Gilbert, S. (1955). James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study . New York: Random House, Inc.
Heffernan, A. (2001). Joyce's Ulysses. Chantilly, Virginia: The Teaching Company.
Hillegass, C. (1981). Cliffs Notes on Joyce's Ulysses. Lincoln, Nebraska: Cliffs Notes, Inc.