Narrative Summary
In this Episode, Bloom walks through Dublin and stops to have something to eat.
Bloom passes a candy shop and sees a priest buying sweets, a treat for students. A young man hands him a flyer for an evangelical lecture. Bloom sees Simon Dedalus’ daughter waiting outside an auction house, and assumes that Simon is inside, selling some furniture. Bloom thinks “home always breaks up when the mother goes,” recalls worriedly that Simon has fifteen children, and ascribes the family’s size to their theology, that a priest won’t give absolution if a married woman attempts birth control. But the priest, Bloom thinks, doesn’t have any mouths to feed. Priests don’t go hungry, they’re “all for number one.” Bloom notices that the Dedalus child’s dress “is in flitters” and that she is underfed.
As he crosses O’Connel bridge, he looks at the river, thinks “If I threw myself down,” and recalls the story (the one he tried to tell in the carriage on the way to the cemetery) about a boy who threw himself from the bridge and was fished out of the water. There are gulls flapping, looking for food, and Bloom crumples the evangelist’s flyer and throws it to the birds but they aren’t interested in paper. He passes a woman selling food from a cart, thinks “wait. Those poor birds,” buys two Banbury cakes from the woman, crumbles them up and tosses them to the gulls.
A rowboat on the river is advertising a brand of trousers, and Bloom admires the ingenuity of the idea, thinking of advertising ideas he’s had in the past, of other clever advertisements he’s seen, like advertising a cure for V.D. over a urinal. It occurs to Bloom that Boylan might have V.D., but he stops himself, diverting his own thoughts to something else. Thinks about Molly saying “oh, rocks” when he tried to explain a word earlier, and smiles, acknowledging that Molly has a way with words, and can get to the heart of an issue.
Men walk by holding signs for something Hely’s stationers, where Bloom used to work, and he remembers when he first started there, earlier in his marriage, a dinner he and Molly went to when Molly wore a lovely dress and was so striking. He thinks “Happy. Happier then.” Thinks about a Milly, a small child, in the bath. Now she’s grown, doing photography. Bloom thinks: “Stream of Life,” thinks of other times with Molly, Molly taking out her hairpins once Milly is asleep in her little bed. “Happy. Happy.”
Bloom is recalled to his surroundings when a woman he used to know, Mrs. Breen (possibly an old flame) greets him, and they exchange family news. Mrs. Breen’s husband is a bit odd or crazy. Bloom notices that her looks have faded, her clothes not as fashionable as they once were, thinks “shabby genteel” but makes sure his thoughts don’t show on his face. He notices another woman looking at Mrs. Breen in a dismissive way and thinks it cruel, that women are “the unfair sex.”
Bloom asks about a mutual friend, Mrs. Purefoy, and learns that she’s been in labor for the past three days, which he is very sorry to hear. Mrs. Breen is giving details when Bloom touches her arm “gently”, warning her to move a bit so that a strange man can pass. Mr. Breen emerges from a building, walking the other way, and Mrs. Breen says goodbye, rushing to catch up with her husband.
Bloom passes the office of another newspaper, The Irish Times, and thinks about going in to check if there have been any more responses to his advertisement for a lady typist. This is how he first got in contact with Martha. Bloom thinks about her letter, decides to let any others’ responses wait, since he’s already read forty-four of them. He believes The Irish Times is the best paper for small personal ads, and thinks of some he’s seen there. The paper is doing so well that its owners bought The Irish Field, which reports hunting news, and Bloom thinks about horse-people, and that horsey women seem more masculine, riding astride, in at the kill . . . He thinks about Mrs. Purefoy, and Mrs. Breen’s life, and childbirth, and midwives and doctors, who come in the middle of the night to deliver a baby but have to wait months for their fee. . . .
Bloom passes some policemen who’ve just had their lunch, and he recalls a time he almost got arrested because he got swept up in a protest of the Boer war, then thinks about how young protesters become part of the establishment as they get older, and about plainclothes policemen spying on Irish radicals. He thinks about how boys who brag to their girls about what they’ve been up to often end up in jail because the girls tell the wrong people. Bloom thinks the Sinn Fein is a smart way to limit infiltration — circles of ten, and only the head knows anyone up the chain of command.
The sky turns gray, and Bloom thinks “things go on the same, day after day;” trams come in and out, policemen march out and back, Mrs. Purefoy groaning in labor on a bed, children born every second, people dying every second, city-full of people passing away, another city-full born. . . “No one is anything.” Bloom thinks “ This is the very worst hour of the day. . . Hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.”
The sun comes out again, and Bloom sees Parnell’s brother pass by, thinks of the coincidence because he was thinking of Parnell earlier. Bloom passes a young couple, hears the man trying to impress the woman with a boring story.
Bloom thinks about the concept of parallax, which he is trying to understand (loosely, the idea that a thing looks different depending on one’s position in relation to it). Mrs. Breen spoke about the full moon being out, and Bloom realizes there was a full moon the night that he, Molly and Boylan all walked together by the river. Bloom wonders what he missed between Molly and Boylan that night. Tells himself “Stop. Stop. If it was it was.”
Bloom passes a building where a theater used to be, thinks of a play he saw there, how time flies . . . “I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?” He was twenty-eight, Molly twenty three. Things changed after Rudy, their son died. Molly said she could “never like it again.” Bloom ponders if he would go back to that time, when they were just beginning. He thinks “Are you not happy in your home” and that makes him think of Martha’s letter, that he needs to answer it, that he’ll write Martha while in the library. “Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.”
“A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. . . . With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.”
Bloom decides he must eat, that he’ll feel better then.
Blogging Ulysses 