Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ulysses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Alienation and the Quest for Belonging
Literature, Meaning, and Perspective
Love and Sex
Fate vs. Free Will
Religion, Atheism, and Philosophy
Irish Identity and Nationalism
Summary
Analysis
This famously difficult episode of Ulysses moves through a series of different narrative voices that each represents a different period in the history of English writing. The episode opens with three mysterious Pagan Roman chants, each repeated three times. The first is “Deshil Holles Eamus” (“Let us go South to Holles Street”). The second is a fertility prayer to the Sun (and the obstetrician Dr. Horne), “Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.” The last, “Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!,” is a reference to a midwife declaring that a baby is a boy.
In the Odyssey, Odysseus learns that he must not interfere with the sun god Helios’s sacred cattle, who are grazing on the island of Thrinacia. But his men slaughter and eat them anyway, causing Zeus to strike them with lightning and kill everyone except Odysseus. This episode of Ulysses echoes that myth by showing how the group of men at its center drunkenly disrupt and disrespect the sacred ritual of childbirth. (The exception is the sober and respectful Bloom.) However, this episode is far better known for its audacious style than for its content. Every few paragraphs, the authorial voice totally changes, which can make this episode nearly incomprehensible to the unprepared reader. These changes happen in chronological order, starting with these Pagan chants. Joyce uses the different voices to set up an enormous extended metaphor: the development of a human fetus is like the historical development of the English language. The episode is subtly divided into three sections (trimesters), nine subsections (months), and forty paragraphs (weeks). Each of the voices represents a particular stage in the formation of modern English style (usually a specific influential writer). By copying all of these great writers’ styles in meticulous detail, Joyce puts himself on a pedestal alongside them—or, more precisely, above them. He suggests that he can do everything they have done and more. According to the gestation metaphor, this novel is the fully-formed human being who emerges from the womb after nine months of development (or several centuries, in the case of language). The episode’s first lines establish its setting, the Irish National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street in Dublin. These chants introduce the theme of fertility and tie it to the sun god, who is Helios in the Greek myth and is Dr. Horne (the head of the hospital) in 20th century Dublin.
Themes
The next three paragraphs are written in the excessively complex and confusing style of poorly-translated Latin prose. The first argues that respectable people understand that procreation is a necessary and important goal for the human race. The second and third paragraphs praise the Irish for making maternal care widely available, thereby honoring expectant mothers.
These paragraphs are practically unreadable because Joyce was careful to follow the precise syntax of Latin (which doesn’t render very well into English). Their focus on the importance of fertility suggests a link to both Bloom and Stephen’s obsession with their families—and especially the male bloodline. By making a point about fertility in this ancient idiom, Joyce suggests that reproduction is one of humankind’s most primordial and unchanging needs.
Themes
The next several paragraphs imitate alliterative Old English prose. The novel describes midwives caring for mothers and newborns, and then notes a Jewish wayfarer (Bloom) wandering into the hospital. He knows the nurse who lets him inside (Nurse Callan) and asks her to forgive him for once failing to salute her “in townhithe” (at the docks). Nurse Callan reports that Dr. O’Hare died of “bellycrab” (a stomach problem) years ago.
Fortunately, the episode quickly becomes a little bit less challenging—and as Joyce’s prose gradually moves through the ages, it will get far easier to understand what he’s up to. However, since his stylistic shifts also become more subtle, contemporary readers might find it more difficult to separate out his various references. For now, his Old English section recounts Bloom walking into the maternity hospital to visit Mrs. Purefoy. It may sound unnatural (and often hilarious) to modern English speakers, because Joyce sticks to words that were available to the Anglo-Saxons and tries to explain medical concepts in the language available at that time.
Themes
The next several paragraphs are modeled on Middle English. The novel implores people to think of their own deaths, and then Bloom asks about the woman he has come to see (Mrs. Purefoy). Nurse Callan says that Purefoy has been in painful labor for three days, but will be giving birth soon. Bloom feels sorry for Callan, who does not have children. Dixon, a “young learningknight” (medical student) comes into the hospital and offers for Bloom to “make merry with” him and his friends in “a marvellous castle” within the hospital. “The traveller Leopold” agrees, and he joins Dixon and some other medical students at their table, where they are eating canned sardines and bread. They pour him a beer, but Bloom doesn’t want any, so he secretly empties it into someone else’s glass.
The hospital serves as a constant reference to birth and death, so it provides an excellent setting for Bloom to contemplate the purpose of his life and the state of his bloodline. After all, his pity for the childless Nurse Callan shows that he sees having children as an important accomplishment for any adult, and his son Rudy’s death hangs over this entire episode. But in contrast to his noble intentions, he manages to join yet another group of vulgar, drunk revelers. (But he still insists on staying sober, just like at Barney Kiernan’s.)
Themes
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The next three long paragraphs imitate the 15th century knight and writer Sir Thomas Malory, who is best known for compiling Arthurian legends. Nurse Callan tells the drinking students to “leave their wassailing” (stop drinking) because a woman (Mrs. Purefoy) is giving birth. There’s a cry upstairs, and Bloom wonders if it’s Purefoy or her child. He tells Lenehan that he hopes she will be done soon, and they toast to Purefoy’s health and drink. In attendance are the “scholars of medicine” Dixon, Lynch, and Madden, plus Lenehan, Crotthers, Stephen Dedalus, Punch Costello, and “the meek sir Leopold [Bloom].” They are still waiting for “young Malachi [Mulligan].”
At long last, the novel’s two protagonists meet. Bloom and Stephen have both been wandering around Dublin all day, and they’ve nearly intersected several times. It’s significant that they first meet in the maternity hospital, because Bloom has come to congratulate Mrs. Purefoy on her new child and reminisce about his own lost son Rudy. Instead of meeting Mrs. Purefoy, Bloom ends up walking out with Stephen, who becomes something of a surrogate son to him. The men’s drunkenness is an insult to the sanctity of childbirth and medicine—not to mention that it’s probably really annoying for Mrs. Purefoy to have to listen to them while she gives birth upstairs. This blasphemous disrespect links the men’s behavior to Odysseus’s ravenous men, who eat the oxen of the sun.
Themes
The “right witty scholars” are discussing whether doctors should save the mother or the baby, when they have to choose between them. They generally agree that it’s better to save the mother, and “the world was now right evil governed” as doctors prefer to save the baby. Stephen jokes that Catholics prefer this because this sends the child to Limbo and the mother to Purgatory, and he quips that Catholics oppose birth control because they think people are just means to reproduction, and they oppose abortion because the fetus acquires a soul in the second month.
The men’s conversation about maternal death and abortion raises questions about the church’s role in setting medical policy in Ireland. Stephen’s cynical jokes about the church center on the idea that it’s interested in trafficking souls to the afterlife, and indifferent to actual human life as a result. Because they’re discussing how childbirth can fail in a maternity hospital, however, it would be fair to suggest that they’re blaspheming against science as much as against the church.
Themes
Bloom is busy thinking about Mrs. Purefoy, and when the younger men ask his opinion on the matter, he jokes that the church chooses to let the mother die because it makes money from both birth (baptism) and death (funerals). He remembers Rudy’s birth and death, and the lambswool vest Molly knitted for his burial. The sonless Bloom feels sorry for Stephen, who is “living in wasteful debauchery.”
Bloom’s clever answer lets him avoid choosing a side between the baby and the mother. Like Stephen, Bloom is suspicious of the church and paints it as brutally self-interested—the only difference is that he thinks in terms of the church’s material self-interest and Stephen thinks about its spiritual priorities. But ironically, Joyce also uses religious imagery here, as Rudy’s lambswool vest associates him with Jesus (the sacrificial lamb or Lamb of God). Bloom starts to transfer his sympathy for his dead son over to Stephen, who needs a father figure.
Themes
The style subtly shifts, beginning to resemble a 16th century chronicle. Stephen fills everyone’s glasses and offers a satirical prayer to the Pope, shows off his little remaining money, and then gives a sermon about the meaning of history, birth, and creation. He jokingly states that people cycle from word to flesh through birth, and back from flesh to word through the Lord. He asks whether the Virgin Mary knew God (making her the son of her son) or whether she didn’t (making her a blasphemer). Essentially, he asks whether Jesus is consubstantial or transubstantial to God. Punch Costello starts belting out a jolly drinking song, and Nurse Quigley opens the door again and asks the men to quiet down. The other drunk men try to stop Costello.
In his speech, Stephen explicitly connects the two forms of creation that are at the heart of his and Bloom’s personal struggles: art and parenthood, respectively. This should make the parallel between them obvious for the reader. Both are trying to create something new despite having failed in the past, and both feel that their sense of identity and fulfillment depends on their ability to carry out this creation. Stephen’s satirical vision of the cycle of life, in which people go from a mind (or idea) to a body and then back again, is a parody of the Gospel of John. It’s also a reference to the concept of metempsychosis (reincarnation), which Joyce uses to explain how different ideas, symbols, and archetypes get recycled throughout myth and literature. Stephen’s comments about the virgin birth recall the moral ambiguity in “Nausicaa,” where Bloom was associated with God and Gerty MacDowell with the Virgin Mary. Finally, Stephen’s thoughts about the relationship between the father and the son parallel his speculation about Shakespeare in “Scylla and Charybdis.” In the context of this episode, these questions are also about Stephen and Bloom’s relationship.
Themes
The narrative voice progresses to the turn of the seventeenth century in an imitation of writers like John Milton. Dixon and Lenehan start discussing how Stephen abandoned the priesthood and commits “nefarious deeds” with women. Stephen embarks on a long monologue, quoting bawdy jokes from 17th century plays. He jokes about men sharing their wives with their friends, which he uses as a metaphor for Ireland’s betrayal to foreigners. He contrasts this with the “land of milk and money [sic]” that the Israelites were promised in the Bible. He discusses the cycle of life, in which people return to the beginning at the end, with a burning desire to understand the past that has brought him there.
Although Nurse Quigley’s warning gets the men to quiet down slightly, they don’t become any less blasphemous. Stephen again mocks the traditional religious promise to give people fulfillment once and for all in the “land of milk and money” (whether that’s in Israel, Dublin, or heaven). Stephen again replaces this traditional promise with the alternative of reincarnation, or metempsychosis. Reincarnation does not promise any single vision of pure fulfillment—like the visions of creation, belonging, and bliss that both Bloom and Stephen chase through fatherhood and poetry. Instead, reincarnation replaces this linear notion of the human life as a race for fulfillment with a cyclical vision of people constantly striving for understanding and improvement.
Themes
Costello interrupts with another exuberant song, but a crack of thunder silences him. Lynch jokes that God is angry at Stephen for his blasphemy. Stephen is secretly desperate and afraid. To cover it up, he jokes that God is drunk and doesn’t really care what he says. But Bloom understands Stephen’s feelings and tries to comfort him.
The loud crack of thunder is a reference to Zeus’s lightning bolt striking down Odysseus’s men. Stephen’s response to it suggests that he hasn’t fully cast off religion (which explains his regret at failing to pray for his mother). Luckily for Stephen, Bloom is sober, empathetic, and looking for a son. Thus, Bloom is perceptive enough to see that Stephen is afraid and he’s kind enough to try to help. This is essentially the first time that Stephen has received any sympathy from anyone in the entire novel.
Themes
The novel’s tone shifts to resemble John Bunyan’s allegorical novel The Pilgrim’s Progress. Bloom’s words of comfort fail to help Stephen. The narration comments that Stephen lacks the grace to believe in God—the thunder merely made him fear death. Instead, Stephen should strive to reach the delightful kingdom of “Believe-on-Me” (heaven). Unfortunately, Stephen and his friends have sold out their souls to “a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior,” named “Bird-in-the-Hand.” This voice repeats that the thunder indeed represented God speaking out against the young men’s debauchery.
The Pilgrim’s Progress is a famous Puritan allegory that describes a man’s long journey out of sin and into heaven by means of his faith. Thus, Joyce’s Bunyan offers a characteristically religious critique of Stephen’s character and intellectual skepticism. Namely, irresponsible behavior might help Stephen cope with his secular fear of a meaningless, permanent death, but it won’t help him get to heaven.
Themes
For one long paragraph, the narrative shifts into the voice of 17th century English diarists like Samuel Pepys. After describing the thunderstorm over Dublin in depth, this paragraph shows Buck Mulligan meet Alec Bannon and chat about “a skittish heifer” he met (Milly Bloom). Mulligan and Bannon then make their way to the maternity hospital, which the narrative describes in colorful detail, with commentary on Mrs. Purefoy going into labor for the twelfth time.
The subplot about Alec Bannon dating Milly Bloom hasn’t come up since the beginning of the novel, when it was briefly mentioned in “Telemachus” and “Calypso.” But like so many other seemingly irrelevant details from the beginning of the book, it’s back, and it’s suddenly important. Here, by comparing Milly to a cow (or heifer), Buck and Alec drive home the “Oxen of the Sun” metaphor and imply that Alec is already somehow violating a sacred order by seeing Milly. Surely enough, he’s about to meet Milly’s father, so this feeling wouldn’t be misplaced.
Themes
Lenehan mentions Mr. Deasy’s letter in the paper on foot and mouth disease. In a new voice that recalls the dynamic political writings of Daniel Defoe, the narrative comments that Lenehan is a well-meaning gentleman who unfortunately spends his time “hanker[ing] about the coffeehouses and low taverns” looking for women. Frank Costello comments on the cows, and the narrative goes on a long tangent about his privileged life and his inability to keep a job, while his government administrator father supports him. Bloom comments on the cattle he saw getting shipped out to England, and the narrative describes his experience working with cattle at the stockyards. Stephen affirms that Dr. Rinderpest is coming to treat the cows.
As the conversation turns to foot and mouth disease and the export of Irish cattle, the allusion to the Odyssey grows even stronger. In Ireland, like on the sun god’s island, the health of cattle becomes an indicator of the nation’s health and fertility as a whole. Thus, cattle exports and foot and mouth disease suggest that Ireland is spiritually struggling. The men at the maternity hospital embody Ireland’s depravity. Lenehan is crude, vulgar, and always around whenever there’s alcohol—but nobody in the novel likes him at all, except for possibly Blazes Boylan. Meanwhile, Costello’s privilege represents how the colonial government profits from the Irish people’s suffering.
Themes
Lynch and Dixon launch into a long, satirical allegory about an Irish bull. In a slightly different voice, now modeled after satirist Jonathan Swift, Lynch and Dixon discuss the way this bull—which represents the Irish Church—gets flattered and pampered in Ireland. The farmer Nicholas and the lord Harry fight over it, but then Harry starts acting like a bull, too, and befriends the Irish bull. At the end of this story, Stephen Dedalus comments, Irishmen give up on their leaders and leave for America.
This allegory illustrates the way that Rome (the Catholic Church) and London (the Church of England) fought over control of Ireland. The theme of outside domination and lost autonomy isn’t new—but the metaphor of the bull is, because it references both Mr. Deasy’s letter and the sun-god’s cattle in the Odyssey. The bull is also a pun on a papal bull (an official declaration by the Pope).
Themes
Buck Mulligan and Alec Bannon arrive in the hospital, and the narrative switches to the style of the eighteenth-century political essayists Addison and Steele. Buck offers everyone present business cards that list his occupation as “Fertiliser and Incubator.” He jokes that he considers it tragic that so many men are sterile or unworthy of their beautiful wives, and he proposes establishing “a national fertilizing farm to be named Omphalos” and offering himself to any willing woman, no matter her social class. He sprinkles in a fake Latin quote about the inadequacy of modern erections. In jest, Buck asks Bloom if he needs any help, and Bloom explains that he’s actually at the hospital for Mrs. Purefoy. Dixon asks the big-bellied Buck whether he’s there to give birth, too.
The joke behind Buck’s whimsical speech is that he portrays having sex with numerous women as a kind of lofty public service. This points to the contradictory role of sex in Ulysses: it’s both a guilty pleasure and a sacred fertility ritual. Like the men’s other conversation topics, Buck’s speech also violates the sacredness of fertility—in his case, by reducing it entirely to sex. (But Bloom refuses to participate in this sacrilege by answering Buck’s question literally.) Of course, the reference to the omphalos implies that Buck’s fertility farm will also be a kind of entry point into the world for new people and ideas (like the Martello tower for Stephen).
Themes
In a paragraph influenced by the satirical novelist Laurence Sterne, Bannon pulls out a picture of his sweetheart—who is no other than Milly Bloom. He sings her praises and makes a joke out of pleading with God about why he forgot to bring his cloak, to prevent her from getting wet. The other men joke about how (and whether) to protect women from dancing in the rain, although it’s clear that they’re really talking about contraception.
Bannon is making a vulgar joke about not bringing a condom to have sex with Milly—but fortunately, Bloom doesn’t yet know who he’s talking about. As throughout the rest of this episode, Joyce manages to be obscene in yet another famous writer’s voice—in a way, he’s consciously blaspheming against the Western canon by appropriating these voices, just like the men in the hospital are blaspheming against the sacred rite of childbirth.
Themes
A section in the style of the Irish writer Goldsmith begins with a ringing bell, after which Nurse Callan enters and whispers something to Dixon. Costello and Lynch joke derisively about the nurse’s looks and her relationship to Dixon, who then prepares to run out, because Mrs. Purefoy has just given birth to her baby boy. But first, he admonishes the others for talking ill of Nurse Callan.
It’s telling that the drunkards don’t listen to the nurses when they ask for peace and quiet, but they take Dixon far more seriously because he’s a doctor and a man. At the same time, Dixon was just making vulgar jokes about Buck a couple paragraphs ago, so it’s clear that his newfound seriousness is just a façade put on for Nurse Callan. In this way, Dixon is a bit of a foil for Bloom, who is also hoping that the medical students will calm down (but doesn’t get taken seriously at all).
Themes
In a moralistic paragraph modeled after the conservative philosopher Edmund Burke, Bloom deplores the young men’s distasteful jokes, but tolerates them since they’re essentially just “overgrown children.” But he thinks that Punch Costello is the worst of the lot, a truly deplorable bastard. Even though he’s learned to control his emotions, he thinks men who denigrate women are the lowest of the low. He’s also happy that Mrs. Purefoy has finally given birth.
By writing Bloom in Edmund Burke’s sober, judgmental style, Joyce shows that he’s using this episode’s various writerly voices to shape its tone as well as its content. Like Odysseus watching his men devour Helios’s sacred cattle, Bloom is the only one who remembers the greater values that are at stake in the hospital. This is understandable, since he yearns so much for a son himself. At the same time, Bloom’s moral values don’t necessarily match up with his actions—for instance, he says he hates men who degrade women, which is essentially what he did in the last episode by masturbating voyeuristically to Gerty MacDowell and calling all women “little devils.”
Themes
In a shorter paragraph that takes after the style of Dublin playwright and political orator Richard Sheridan, Bloom remarks that he feels relieved that Mrs. Purefoy has given birth. But Crotthers starts to speculate about whether the elderly Mr. Purefoy is really the father. If he is, the other students comment, they’re impressed by his virility. But Crotthers thinks the father is more likely a clerk or wandering salesman. Bloom is astonished that these vulgar boys will become esteemed doctors as soon as they get their degrees.
While Bloom is in part relieved because Mrs. Purefoy is no longer suffering, her baby boy also symbolically represents the boy that he always dreamed about having. The students’ speculation about the father’s identity also echoes Stephen’s theory about the “mystical estate” of fatherhood in “Scylla and Charybdis.” In turn, Bloom is offended on behalf of Mr. Purefoy. But since the very nature of fatherhood has been called into question, Bloom is also personally offended. This is because his sense of identity is closely tied to being Milly’s father and wanting another son.
Themes
In a flowery passage imitating eighteenth century political satire, the narrative questions whether Bloom, an ungrateful immigrant, has a right to censor and criticize the students. He’s morally unfit, the narrative suggests: he tried to sleep with a servant, he has left his wife’s “seedfield […] fallow for the want of the ploughshare,” and he’s a debaucherous masturbator.
By introducing yet another narrative voice, Joyce again forces the reader to consider the situation from an entirely different angle. The comment about immigration is likely Joyce’s way of pointing fun at pompous nationalist writers. But there’s some logic in the point about Bloom’s own transgressions against the sanctity of sex and fertility. The joke about the un-ploughed field is a reference to the fact that Bloom and Molly haven’t had sex for many years.
Themes
In the serious tone of historians like Edward Gibbon, the narrative ironically presents the joyful occasion of Mrs. Purefoy giving birth as though it were a serious political event. The medical students are described as delegates, and although Bloom tries to quiet them down, they end up prattling on about different medical procedures, birth defects, modes of insemination, and obstetrics research questions. They start discussing whether women can really have intercourse with mythical beasts, and Mulligan declares that “a nice clean old man” is the best thing to desire. Madden and Lynch start arguing about Siamese twins.
Because the narrative voice is constantly changing throughout this episode, the target of Joyce’s satire is constantly changing, too. In the last few sections, for instance, the voices have gone from serious to satirical and back again, while Joyce’s criticism has variously targeted the medical students, Bloom, and then the very authorial voice he’s borrowing. The students’ medical discussion is full of specific, anatomically-precise jokes about gestation and development. The debate about sex with mythical beasts and “clean old m[e]n” returns to Bloom’s dilemma in the statues: is it better to love real women, who are exciting and alive, or sterile Greek statues, who are eternal and unchanging? Of course, this is also a metaphor for Stephen’s dilemma about whether to search for truth and beauty in the world, or seek it through the metaphysical ideas of art and philosophy.
Themes
In a parody of gothic horror, Haines suddenly appears as a ghost, holding a book of Irish literature and a vial of poison. He confesses to the Childs murder and declares that he’s being haunted by his victim’s spirit, then vanishes (and briefly reappears to ask Buck to meet him at the train station).
This spooky scene foreshadows the coming “Circe” episode. It also shows that Joyce is moving past simply modeling his tone and style on historical authors: now he’s letting them intervene in the plot, too. In reality, Haines is just visiting to ask Buck to meet him at the train station—which suggests that they are planning something that doesn’t include Stephen.
Themes
In a nostalgic, thoughtful paragraph modeled after the essayist Charles Lamb, the novel shows Bloom reflecting on his younger self. He remembers going to high school with his bookbag and traveling to sell trinkets for the family business. Looking at the young men around him, he feels like a paternal figure. He remembers losing his virginity with Bridie Kelly, a prostitute, and laments the fact that he still doesn’t have a son.
This passage is one of the only glimpses the reader ever gets of Bloom’s childhood. He’s trying to empathize with the young students, but he’s also revealing how he wants to help his children avoid the challenges and frustrations that he faced when he was young. He seems to have finished transferring his feelings about Rudy to the other young men, which sets up the extended father-son metaphor that links him to Stephen in the remaining episodes of the novel.
Themes
In a section parodying the romantic writer Thomas De Quincey’s accounts of drug-induced hallucinations, Bloom has a grand vision of infinite space and silence, and he sees his soul flying towards the Dead Sea, surrounded by a herd of moaning beasts in parallax. He sees a “wonder of metempsychosis,” a radiant figure who is both Martha and Milly.
This comical hallucination about infinity, parallax, and metempsychosis provides a clear metaphor for Bloom’s overarching quest in the novel. In this hallucination, Bloom is seeking out the promised land—Israel, the location of the Dead Sea. This represents his quest for meaning and fulfillment, which Joyce constantly compares to the more general human quest for salvation through religion. The moaning beasts who race to Israel alongside him include horses and cows. The reference to parallax suggests that these beasts offer alternative perspectives on Bloom’s race to Israel—in other words, they’re metaphors that can help the reader better understand the meaning of Bloom’s journey. The horses reference the Ascot Gold Cup race, symbolizing Bloom’s competition with Boylan over Molly. Cows symbolize fertility (through the association with the Odyssey) but also Irish dependence on England (because of the cows being exported to Liverpool). Finally, the “wonder of metempsychosis” involves two of the three women who are most important to Bloom (Martha and Milly), but not the most important (Molly). Of course, their similar names indicate that Bloom’s feelings about Martha and Milly are really only indirect expressions of his deeper love for Molly (just as metempsychosis allows the soul to transfer from one body to the other).
Themes
The novel shifts radically in tone, becoming a friendly dialogue among Stephen Dedalus and his friends, in the style of Walter Savage Landor’s Imaginary Conversations (which stages such dialogues between figures from classical Greece and Rome). Stephen and Punch Costello start reminiscing about school, and Stephen claims that he can bring “the past and its phantoms […] into life” through poetry. But Vincent Lynch says that Stephen hasn’t “father[ed]” enough work yet to justify this boastfulness. Adding insult to injury, Lenehan brings up Stephen’s mother’s memory, leaving Stephen distraught.
Stephen and Punch Costello’s conversation closely parallels Bloom’s reminiscence about his childhood. The crucial difference is that Stephen’s innate need to “father” artwork takes the place of Bloom’s need to father literal children. By citing Imaginary Conversations, Joyce also explicitly associates Stephen and Costello with the classical world. This is a reference to their literary aspirations, but also a cruel joke about their inability to fulfill those aspirations.
Themes
Conversation suddenly turns to the Ascot Gold Cup: Madden complains that Sceptre was about to win, but Throwaway pulled ahead at the last minute. Then, Lynch starts talking about having a “mad romp” with his girlfriend in the bushes and nearly getting caught by Father Conmee, who said a blessing for them. Lenehan grabs for a bottle of wine, but Buck stops him because “the stranger” (Bloom) is staring at it, as though having a vision. In reality, the novel reports in a roundabout and opinionated style, Bloom is thinking about business. When he realizes that the others see him staring at the bottle, he has a drink. The narrative voice reports that the men get into a lively debate, then describes all nine of them in detail.
Joyce emphasizes the men’s rowdy drunkenness through increasingly abrupt transitions between different events, conversations, and literary styles. The Ascot Gold Cup is still a metaphor for Bloom and Boylan. Father Conmee’s futile attempt to stop Lynch and his girlfriend from sinning in the bushes represents the way that the church is losing its traditional authority (especially over medicine and sex). In an example of parallax storytelling, the reader first encountered this episode through Father Conmee’s (religious) perspective during “Wandering Rocks,” but now sees it from Lynch’s (modern) perspective here. The comical mismatch between Buck and Bloom, who are staring at the same bottle, is another obvious example of parallax perspectives that gradually change the meaning of the novel’s events.
Themes
A new narrative voice begins to explain why Stephen’s transcendental philosophy “runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods.” This voice asks several complicated questions about embryology and outlines the assembled students’ different views on infant mortality. While Buck Mulligan blames poor hygiene, for instance, Crotthers blames abuse and neglect, and Lynch attributes it to some unknown natural law. This voice then speculates that nature promotes infant mortality if and when it’s evolutionarily advantageous. It comments favorably on Stephen’s notion of “an omnivorous being” eating babies and corpses.
This new voice outlines the contrast between philosophical and scientific views of the universe, which is no longer understandable strictly through religion. Later, the tension between these two views becomes a central theme in Stephen and Bloom’s relationship during the “Ithaca” episode. In addition to making several obscure medical references to the later stages of gestation, Joyce is also mocking both sides (Stephen’s lofty philosophy and scientists’ overly rigid and fatalistic explanations, which wrongly attribute things that people actually can control to evolution).
Themes
In an imitation of Dickens, the novel narrates Mrs. Purefoy giving birth and enjoying her first moments with her baby boy. The only thing missing is her husband Doady, whom the narration praises as a noble old man who has “fought the good fight.” After this voice bids Doady good night, another takes over, parodying the theologian Cardinal Newman. This voice speaks of the way people struggle to confront the “evil memories” that lurk in the backs of their minds.
Joyce’s different authorial voices are now commenting on the relationship between religion, science, and philosophy in modern life. So it’s only natural that he turns to Dickens, the most famous literary chronicler of the industrial revolution and moral critic of modern urban society. With Theodore Purefoy, the motif of the absent father repeats. This signals that the novel is transitioning back to Bloom and Stephen’s family issues.
Themes
Another new voice depicts Bloom listening to Stephen’s calm but resentful talk. Stephen’s expression gives Bloom a kind of déjà vu: it reminds him of a game of lawn bowling several years before, when he saw a young lad with the same frown gazing up at his mother. An imitation of the art critic John Ruskin narrates how one word ends the brief period of calm and quiet in the hospital, much like swollen storm clouds suddenly yield thunder: “Burke’s!”
The young lad from the bowling game was Stephen: Bloom is remembering Stephen’s childhood and marveling about how he’s changed as he’s grown up. Now that Mrs. Purefoy has already given birth, Bloom is clearly growing fond of the young man and starting to feel protective of him, like a father. Stephen is taking on the role of Bloom’s dead son Rudy, and Bloom is hoping to stand in for Stephen’s neglectful father Simon.
Themes
In the style of conservative Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle, the men rush out the hospital door, following Stephen to Burke’s pub. Bloom chats with Nurse Callan on his way out, sending his best to Mrs. Purefoy and asking her when it’s her turn for a visit from “the storkbird.” The narration describes the humid Dublin air and praises Theodore Purefoy in increasingly absurd terms for successfully getting his wife pregnant for the twelfth time.
In a classic bit of Joycean irony, Bloom never actually visits Mrs. Purefoy—he ends up feeling attached to Stephen instead and following him out to Burke’s. His conversation with Nurse Callan and the novel’s description of Theodore Purefoy return to the idea from the very beginning of this episode: conception, childbirth, and parenting are important rituals—or even holy ones.
Themes
The narration has clearly reached the 20th century, and a chaotic, slang-filled jumble of the revelers’ voices takes over the remainder of this episode. The men stumble over to Burke’s, order their drinks, chatter for ten minutes, and get kicked out at closing time. Although most of the dialogue is jumbled, it’s possible to distinguish a few plot points. The men drink absinthe, Bannon appears to learn that Bloom is Milly’s father, and the man in the macintosh seems to make an appearance. Someone starts vomiting and someone else declares their love for a woman named Mona. Stephen and Lynch look for a brothel and notice the Dowie pamphlet that Bloom threw into the River Liffey: “Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb.” The episode ends with several vulgar jokes about religion.
“Oxen of the Sun” ends by juxtaposing another raucous drinking scene with more religious imagery. This foreshadows the novel’s climax in the next episode, when Bloom and Stephen have an important epiphany in a brothel. While Joyce’s different authorial voices have grown closer together in time over the course of the episode, their tones have diverged more and more. Now, the very end of the episode devolves into a cacophony of different voices that simply don’t fit together, even though they’re all written in the same local Dublin accent. It’s just as difficult to understand as the Latin voices at the very beginning of the episode. For one, this stylistic choice reflects the men’s increasing drunkenness and provides a natural transition into the wild fantasy that makes up the next episode. But Joyce also seems to be using this diversity of styles to comment on the diversity of people, literature, and perspectives in the modern world. In Ulysses, he attempts to make a series of extremely different experiences and worldviews fit together into a single book. Rather than forcing them all into a unified, homogenous whole, he portrays a few of these in depth and gives a hint of the broader variety of “parallax” life that coexists in modern Dublin.
Themes
