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Episode 6: Hades
Themes
and Colors
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
Newspaper headlines interrupt the text throughout this episode, which begins, “In the Heart of the Hibernian [Irish] Metropolis,” then describes busy tramcars rushing around the city. Under “The Wearer of the Crown,” the novel depicts British royal mail cars unloading letters and packages outside the post office. After the headline “Gentlemen of the Press,” a newspaperman named Red Murray cuts an old Alexander Keyes ad out of the paper for Bloom. A headline names William Brayden, an imposing, Jesus-like bearded man who climbs the stairs and draws Bloom and Red Murray’s attention.
This is the first episode where Joyce starts innovating with his novel’s form—and his innovations only get more radical and complex from here onward. While it’s easy to mistake the newspaper headlines for summaries of discrete sections of the story, they’re not: they’re more like a running commentary on events. Sometimes they just describe things, but often they also offer opinions or sarcastic remarks. And they’re not always located at natural transition points in the text. Through these formal experiments, Joyce challenges the notion that a single coherent point of view must hold a novel together, and he explores the way different genres can give readers access to the same story in different ways. In the Odyssey, Aeolus is the god of wind, and he gives Odysseus a bag of wind to help bring his boat home to Ithaca. But Odysseus’s men foolishly open the bag too soon, blow his ship off its path, and get stranded. Aeolus refuses to help Odysseus a second time. Aeolus loosely corresponds to the newspaper editor Myles Crawford, who blows Bloom’s plans off course. The episode’s tone breaks sharply with the sleepiness of “Lotus Eaters” and reflectiveness of “Hades,” but it also closely alludes to the Odyssey: its rushed prose and references to rhythmic, noisy action in the heart of Dublin resemble blowing wind, or (as Joyce put it) the lungs breathing in and out. The clang of tram cars and thud of unloaded cargo set up this rhythm from the start of the episode.
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Bloom takes the Keyes ad clipping to the office of the Freeman newspaper, but the paper’s manager Nannetti is busy with Hynes, who is filing his story on Dignam’s funeral. While Bloom waits, he notes that Nannetti “never saw his real country” and thinks about all the different sections of a newspaper, while the machines mechanically print out copies in the background. Hynes finishes, and before he runs out, Bloom comments that he should visit the cashier soon—Hynes owes Bloom money.
Bloom’s client, Alexander Keyes, is also a pun on the “keys” that Bloom and Stephen have lost during the day. Bloom’s comment suggests that he identifies with Nannetti, who is also the son of immigrants. However, Nannetti has clearly achieved more status and success than Bloom—in fact, he’s even a Member of Parliament. Even Hynes clearly gets preference before Bloom, even though his reporting at Dignam’s funeral was clearly less than perfect and he owes Bloom money. In a nutshell, Bloom feels that he doesn’t get the respect he deserves in Dublin, and readers may or may not agree with him.
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“We See the Canvasser at Work,” the novel announces. Bloom gives the old Keyes ad to the unspeaking Nannetti and explains that Keyes wants to reprint it, along with a new logo: two crossed keys surrounded by a circle. Bloom explains that this is a reference to the fight for independence in the Isle of Man (which lies in the Irish Sea between England and Ireland). Nannetti says that he needs a copy of the design, but that he can run it if Keyes will renew his ad for three months. Bloom watches the staff work in silence amidst the printing machines’ deafening, rhythmic noise.
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Nannetti begins spellchecking a set of proofs, and Bloom wonders if he should have said something else in order to capture the man’s attention. He leaves after Nannetti starts arguing with the head typesetter, Monks, about a letter from the archbishop. On his way out, Bloom wonders about Monks’s life and notices him setting type backwards, which makes him think of his father reading Hebrew. He decides to call Keyes—but first, a headline announces, “Only Once More That Soap.” Bloom smells the soap on his handkerchief and moves it to his other pocket. It reminds him of Martha asking about his wife’s perfume in her letter, and he briefly considers visiting Molly at home.
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Bloom hears Ned Lambert’s voice in the Evening Telegraph office and decides to use the phone inside. He enters to find Ned, Simon Dedalus, and Professor MacHugh mocking an overelaborate speech made by the politician and baker Dan Dawson the previous night. J.J. O’Molloy enters the office, and the headline “Sad” comments on his failed career as a lawyer. O’Molloy asks for the editor Myles Crawford, and Bloom thinks it has something to do with his debts. Lambert, Dedalus, and MacHugh return to mocking Dawson’s speech, focusing on an absurd description of the beautiful Irish countryside. Dedalus calls it “Shite and onions!” and the men laugh. Bloom wonders if the speech was more inspiring in person.
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The harsh, imposing editor Myles Crawford rushes into the room. He and Professor MacHugh start making fun of each other, and then Ned Lambert and Simon Dedalus leave for a drink, making cryptic references to Irish military history on their way out. Bloom asks Crawford to use the phone, and Crawford ignores him, but he makes the call anyway.
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After the headline “Spot the Winner,” Lenehan emerges from an office with the paper Sport and says that Sceptre is going to win the Ascot Gold Cup. One of the rowdy paper staff bursts in the door by accident, letting in a draft that shuffles around the paper’s pages. MacHugh kicks the staffer out. Meanwhile, Bloom finishes his phone call and crashes into Lenehan on his way out of the office. When he announces he’s leaving to find Keyes, Crawford jokingly yells at him, “Begone! […] the world is before you.”
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Lenehan and MacHugh watch through the window as Bloom walks away, and Crawford jingles his keys around and proposes the newsmen go drink with Lambert and Dedalus. O’Molloy, MacHugh, and Crawford light cigarettes and joke about how the British Empire has subjugated Ireland. MacHugh half-seriously declares that the British Empire’s true strength comes from its toilets—just as the Romans conquered the world by building sewers.
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Mr. O’Madden Burke and Stephen Dedalus enter the office. Stephen presents Crawford with Mr. Deasy’s letter, which is missing the corner Stephen tore off to write poetry. Crawford remembers how Deasy’s cranky ex-wife once threw her bowl of soup at a waiter, and Stephen suddenly understands Deasy’s misogyny. Professor MacHugh talks about how the Irish are “loyal to lost causes,” because they have lived under the control of more practical rulers (like the Romans and English) but still fight to preserve “the radiance of the intellect,” kind of like Pyrrhus fought to save Greece.
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Lenehan invents a limerick about MacHugh and makes a bad joke: the title of the English opera The Rose of Castille sounds like a railway line, “rows of cast steel.” The other men generally ignore him. Under the imitation Latin headline “Omnium Gatherum,” the men compliment each other’s talents and note that they’re missing Bloom, who’s skilled in “the gentle art of advertisement,” and his wife, “Dublin’s prime favorite” singer. Lenehan coughs and jokes about coming down with a cold in the park.
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Crawford asks Stephen to try writing something for the paper. He thinks Stephen could “paralyse Europe” with something inventive, like how the journalist Ignatius Gallaher sent encoded information to New York about the 1881 Phoenix Park murders committed by the invincibles (a group of Irish nationalists). The phone rings, and MacHugh answers: it’s Bloom, calling for Crawford. But Crawford asks MacHugh to pass on a message: “Tell him to go to hell.” The newspapermen continue reminiscing about the Phoenix Park case, remembering how a noblewoman accidentally bought a postcard commemorating one of the murderers, right outside a government building. Crawford concludes that Ireland’s reporters are deteriorating as much as its legal system.
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Stephen’s mind drifts to his poetry, and then to some rhyming Italian lines from Dante. O’Molloy insists that Ireland still has excellent jurists, like Seymour Bushe, who defended the accused in the Childs murder case. This case reminds Stephen of the scene in Hamlet when the king’s ghost explains how he was murdered. O’Molloy strikes a match and lights his cigar. (Thinking in retrospect, Stephen remarks that this action—striking the match—was far more important than it initially seemed.) O’Molloy recites Seymour Bushe’s greatest line from the trial, a convoluted explanation of the ancient laws of evidence, then he asks if Stephen likes the line, but Stephen just blushes and takes a cigarette instead. O’Molloy remarks that he chatted with Professor Magennis about Stephen, who apparently asked a visiting American researcher about Madame Blavatsky’s theosophists. Stephen wants to ask what Magennis said, but he knows he shouldn’t.
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MacHugh interrupts to declare that John F. Taylor gave the best speech he ever saw in a debate over reviving the Irish language. In fact, MacHugh knows the speech by heart, and he recites it. Taylor compares England’s domination over the Irish to the way the Egyptians tried to force their language, culture, and rule on the Israelites, who managed to escape bondage by following Moses’s lead. But O’Molloy laments that Moses “died without having entered the land of promise.” Similarly, Stephen thinks that Taylor’s speech was ultimately “gone with the wind,” turned into “dead noise” by the course of history.
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Stephen asks the men if it isn’t time to depart, and the group agrees to go for a drink at Mooney’s pub. As the newsboys run into the office with news from the races, Stephen realizes, “I have much, much to learn.” He starts telling MacHugh about the story he’s hoping to write under the headlines “Dear Dirty Dublin” and “Life on the Raw.” Stephen imagines two elderly virgins who save up their money so that they can see Dublin from atop Nelson’s pillar. They bring 24 plums as a snack, but they’re unprepared for the long walk up the pillar. The women, who are Florence MacCabe and Anne Kearns, struggle to climb the stairs.
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A flurry of activity interrupts Stephen’s story—the newsboys have more updates from the Ascot Gold Cup horseraces. Leopold Bloom also returns to the office. He tells Crawford that Keyes will run his ad for two months, if the Telegraph is willing to publish a paragraph about his business. Crawford matter-of-factly says that Keyes can “kiss [his] arse,” and Bloom replies with confusion and disappointment before Crawford repeats what he said. Crawford also rejects J.J. O’Molloy’s request for a loan.
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MacHugh mentions Stephen’s story to Crawford, which gives Stephen a chance to finish telling it. The two elderly virgins hurt their necks looking at the statue of the “onehanded adulterer” Nelson atop the pillar. Then, they eat their plums and spit them out over the edge of the railing. MacHugh compares Stephen to the Greek philosopher Antisthenes, who gave “the palm of beauty […] to poor Penelope.”
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On their way to the pub, the men pass the busy tram lines next to Nelson’s pillar, but the cars aren’t running because of a short circuit. Crawford admits that he doesn’t understand Stephen’s story, but MacHugh proposes a Latin name for it. Stephen prefers “A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums.” O’Molloy looks up at the pillar and smiles at Stephen’s idea that Nelson is a “onehanded adulterer.”
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