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
Mr. Leopold Bloom, who loves devouring animal organs, wants kidneys for breakfast. He prepares buttered bread and tea for his wife, then turns to the meowing cat, who is asking for milk. Bloom marvels at her cunning and wonders how she perceives the world. She probably sees Bloom like a tower. She blinks her green eyes, and he pours her milk from the jug that the milkman just filled up. Bloom decides to buy a pork kidney from the butcher Dlugacz, so he climbs the stairs to tell his wife that he’s running out for a minute and ask if she wants breakfast. Half-asleep, she says “Mn” (“no”) and rolls over, causing the brass rings on the bedstand to jingle.
In this fourth episode, the novel abruptly shifts to center its main protagonist, Mr. Leopold Bloom. In the Odyssey, Calypso was the goddess who held Odysseus captive on her island for seven years. In Ulysses, Calypso loosely corresponds to Molly in this episode, but is also just a reference to the starting point of Bloom’s journey. Notably, many of the symbols from the first episode recur in this opening scene—like tea and milk, the tower, and emerald-like flashes of green. While these symbols clearly tie the two episodes together, Bloom’s view of the world could not be more different from Stephen’s. Notably, Joyce’s third-person narrator also changes to resemble Bloom’s light, curious, whimsical perspective. Although he likes to devour their organs, Bloom is also remarkably kind to animals—he’s obviously an empathetic and caring man. Molly’s first word, “mn” (her grumbled way of saying “no”), foreshadows the end of the novel, when her final word, “Yes,” suggests that she has transformed. Finally, the bedstand’s jingling rings foreshadow the jingling sound that later gets associated with Blazes Boylan, the man with whom Molly goes on to have an affair.
Themes
Bloom checks for his secret piece of paper inside his hat and his lucky potato in his pants pocket. His key is in another pair of pants, but he doesn’t want to disturb his wife by searching for it, so he goes out and leaves the door open. He notes the sun striking the church and predicts that it’ll be a hot day, especially in the black suit he has to wear. As he walks through Dublin, he imagines visiting an exotic city in the East, at least the way it’s depicted in books.
Just like Stephen, Bloom leaves without the key to his own home. This foreshadows the way that—again, just like Stephen—he will soon see his home usurped by a traitor. Outside on the street, Bloom is attentive to small details in the world around him, but his kind of awareness is also remarkably different from Stephen’s. Whereas Stephen focused on sounds and let them spiral out into thoughts and theories, Bloom is more attuned to sights and physical sensations, and his interest in them is practical. Thus, while Bloom is also clearly a thoughtful and educated man, his concerns are essentially worldly and external, while Stephen’s are fundamentally mental, spiritual, and internal.
Themes
Passing Larry O’Rourke’s bar, Bloom remembers that O’Rourke never wants to buy ads and how Simon Dedalus imitates him. He considers discussing Dignam’s funeral, but just bids O’Rourke “good day” instead. Bloom wonders how barmen like O’Rourke make a living and starts calculating his sales, but gets distracted when he reaches Dlugacz’s window, which displays sausages and one last kidney. His neighbor’s serving-girl is there, buying sausages, and he remembers the way her skirt swings around when she hits a carpet on a clothesline. Bloom looks at a newspaper ad for a cattle farm, and since he hopes to gawk at the serving-girl on her way home, he rushes to buy his kidney. He evades Dlugacz’s gaze and quickly says goodbye, but the girl is already gone.
When he passes O’Rourke’s, Bloom’s comments give away his profession as an ad salesman. This job is firmly middle-class, which reinforces Bloom’s status as an everyman hero. But the newspaper ads he sells are also tied to the development of new media and technologies, which suggests that Bloom also represents the spirit of the times. His calculations make his good business sense obvious, but this good judgment does not seem to extend to the way he treats women. When he gawks at the serving-girl, this is the first sign in the novel of his sexual eccentricities (and occasional predatory behavior). Of course, it’s deeply ironic that Bloom buys a pork kidney for breakfast, because he’s Jewish (and so is Dlugacz, the butcher). At the very least, this signals that he’s probably not very religious.
Themes
Bloom walks home, reading a newspaper ad for Agendath Netaim, a company selling fruit fields in Israel. He thinks of old friends, passes a man he vaguely remembers, and notices a cloud passing in front of the sun, which makes him think of darker imagery, like the desert, the Dead Sea, and Sodom and Gomorrah. An old woman crosses in front of him, reminding him of the horrible inevitability of death. But he concludes that he’s just having a bad morning. He observes the other houses beside his on Eccles street, and the sunlight returns.
Like almost everything else in this novel, Agendath Netaim is an elaborate metaphor: it represents fertility and abundance in the promised land. But when the cloud passes by, Bloom sees a series of symbols that represent the opposite: barrenness, punishment, and death. Both of these opposed concepts are frequently associated with women throughout the novel. This symbolism suggests that Bloom’s quest will be at least partially about finding fertility—in other words, reuniting with his wife and securing a future for his children. In fact, this is the form of creation that Bloom seeks, in order to find his place in and leave his mark on the world. Stephen is also obsessed with creation, but he conceptualizes his goals in terms of art.
Themes
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Inside Bloom’s house, a card and two letters are waiting. There’s a letter for Bloom from his daughter Milly, and a letter in suspicious handwriting and a card for his wife Molly. Upstairs, Molly hides the letter under her pillow and asks Leopold (“Poldy”) for tea. Bloom boils tea, fries the pork kidney with pepper, and gives its bloody wrapping paper to the cat. He scans his letter from Milly, drinks his tea out of a cup she gave him for his birthday, and remembers her happy childhood.
Molly’s suspicious letter is the first sign of her infidelity in the novel. Yet Bloom still loyally makes her breakfast. It’s possible to interpret this in a number of different ways: he might be blissfully unaware of her relationship, he might simply not care, he might be pathetically trying to win her back, or he might just feel a sense of duty to her regardless. Only time will tell. Again, the cat becomes a symbol of Bloom’s gentle nature, and his letter from Milly suggests that he is a beloved father.
Themes
Leopold Bloom brings Molly breakfast in bed and asks about her letter, which is from Boylan, the man who organizes her concerts. She’ll be singing “Là ci darem” (a duet from Don Giovanni) and “Love’s Old Sweet Song.” She points Leopold to the foot of her bed; he retrieves her underwear, but she’s actually asking for a book. She’s marked a word she doesn’t understand: “metempsychosis,” which Leopold defines as “the transmigration of souls,” or reincarnation. The book is a circus-themed erotic novel that reminds Bloom of trapeze accidents, death, reincarnation, and Dignam’s funeral. Molly reports that the novel wasn’t “smutty” enough, and she asks for a Paul de Kock novel instead. Leopold briefly explains reincarnation to Molly, in the process glancing at the picture of a naked nymph above their bed, which reminds him of her.
It might not be obvious to the reader yet, but Boylan is the man Molly will be sleeping with later today. This detail is absolutely essential to understanding the symbolism in this passage. The songs that Molly will sing are both love songs, but their tones and messages are remarkably different. Namely, “Là ci darem” is a song about Don Juan manipulating a woman into sleeping with him, while “Love’s Old Sweet Song” is a ballad about the enduring power of lifelong love. In short, “Là ci darem” represents Molly’s relationship with Boylan, and “Love’s Old Sweet Song” represents her enduring relationship with Bloom—and especially the possibility that their love will eventually win out over their extramarital adventures. “Metempsychosis,” or reincarnation, is also an essential concept to understanding this novel. Like the “omphalos,” metempsychosis ties Joyce’s characters to the ancient models and archetypes of Greece through a metaphor of rebirth. It refers to the way such models and archetypes get recycled and reenacted over time, but also explains where people come from and how the soul can continue to exist after death. In other words, like the cycle of life, metempsychosis suggests that everything new is really the result of things that previously existed, and that after people die, their souls and legacies really live on in an altered form. Finally, Molly’s interest in eclectic, “smutty” novels gives the reader significant insight about gender roles in Joyce’s Dublin. It shows that Molly is unusually open about her sexuality, but also that she’s essentially stuck at home all day with little to do besides read. “Paul de Kock” is one of Joyce’s clever, easy-to-miss puns: it means “Poldy [Leopold] cock.”
Themes
Molly smells smoke from the kitchen, and Bloom rushes downstairs to serve himself the slightly burned kidney with tea and bread dipped in gravy. He reads Milly’s letter in full: she thanks her parents for her 15th birthday present, lovingly writes that her photography studies are going well, and mentions a boy named Bannon who sings Boylan’s “seaside girls” song. Bloom remembers when Milly was born and laments that his and Molly’s son, Rudy, died as an infant. He rereads the letter and wonders about her inevitable sexual awakening.
Bloom’s reference to his dead son Rudy is extremely significant, because Rudy’s death is the greatest symbol of Bloom’s sense of failure as a father and husband. Milly’s letter gives further proof that she loves her father, and the fact that he’s reading it as soon as he can in the morning suggests that Bloom also deeply loves his daughter. It’s easy to miss, but Bannon and Milly came up at the end of episode one, when Buck Mulligan was talking to a friend while bathing. This shows that Bloom and Stephen’s social circles are at least loosely connected. Milly’s profession, photography, is a clear sign of how modern media technologies are fast changing Dublin society (which Bloom clearly understands, as an adman). It also recalls Stephen’s musings at the beginning of episode three about the nature of what is visible and its resemblance to the true underlying reality.
Themes
The cat meows at the door, hoping to go outside, but Bloom has to go to the bathroom first. He grabs an old newspaper and heads out into the garden, which he thinks about redoing on his way to the outhouse. Inside, he sits and starts to do his business while reading Philip Beaufoy’s Titbits newspaper’s prizewinning story, “Matcham’s Masterstroke.” He smartly skims the beginning and end, and he thinks he could write a winning story, too. He thinks about Molly getting dressed the morning after she met Blazes Boylan. He’s done, so he tears apart the winning story and wipes himself with it. Leaving the outhouse, he hears the church bells ring 8:45 AM and thinks about “Poor Dignam!”
Bloom’s extremely detailed outhouse scene again indicates that Joyce is interested in portraying all aspects of human life, including those generally considered too vulgar for respectable literature. The popular British newspaper Titbits compiled quotes, jokes, and short articles from other publications around the world; it could be seen as the earliest version of what is now clickbait journalism. Bloom is evidently interested in the paper’s strategy and success, and his own literary aspirations are mostly about getting published, not about creating exquisite art. Between Titbits and Molly’s erotic novels, it’s clear that the Blooms don’t share Stephen Dedalus’s sophisticated taste in literature and belief in the absolute purity of art. Finally, the church bells that Bloom hears in this passage are the same ones that Stephen heard at the end of the first episode. This shows that the events of these episodes are happening simultaneously.. It’s one of the first times in the book that Joyce applies his literary interpretation of the astronomical concept of “parallax”—the same event is seen from two distinct perspectives, which makes it possible to understand the difference between these perspectives. While they’re both also thinking about death at this moment, Stephen is fixated on the past (his mother’s death) while Bloom is thinking about the future (his friend Dignam’s funeral).
Themes
