Episode 16: Eumaeus

Picking up the action immediately after the end of “Circe,” the “Eumaeus” episode covers the time between roughly 12:45 and 1:40 am.  Mr. Bloom welcomes Stephen out of his stupor and takes him to a nearby cabman’s shelter for a quiet moment and some sustenance.  

In The Odyssey, Odysseus returns home to Ithaca, emerges from an Athena-induced haze, disguises himself as a beggar, goes to the hut of Eumaeus, his swineherd.  Rather than reveal himself immediately, Odysseus tells Eumaeus false stories about his identity and origin.  After Eumaeus passes a loyalty test, Odysseus reveals his true identity.  Later in Eumaeus’s hut, Odysseus is united with his son, Telemachus.  Together, the three men plot an attack on the suitors plaguing Odysseus’s home and besetting his wife Penelope.

The style of the “Eumaeus” episode, identified by Joyce in his schemas as “narrative (old),” has been met with divergent critical opinions.  Richard Ellmann claims that the episode “struggles clumsily for the right expression” (Ellmann 151), while Stanley Sultan describes it as “the attempt of a poorly-educated man to impress by discoursing with sophisticated eloquence” (Sultan 364).  David Hayman calls the episode “a tired, threadbare, flatulent narrative larded with commonplaces” whereby “the arranger conveys with surprising accuracy the drink and fatigue-dulled sentiments of both protagonists” (Hayman 102-03).  Maybe.

In my opinion, the most useful understanding of the style of this episode relies on the Uncle Charles Principle.  In short, “the Uncle Charles Principle entails writing about someone much as that someone would choose to be written about” (Kenner 21).  Applying this concept to the current episode, “Eumaeus” is written in the style that Bloom would have employed if he himself had written the episode; indeed, Bloom later announces his intention to compose exactly this piece of literature: “suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. My experiences, let us say, in a Cabman’s Shelter” (16.1229-31).  So, rather than condemning “Eumaeus” as stilted, over-ornamented prose with garbled syntax and imprecise diction, we might instead consider the episode’s use of Bloom’s own literary style (flawed as it may be) as the ultimate celebration of Bloom himself (flawed as he may be).  By ceding such control to Mr. Bloom, Joyce offers “the book’s most profound tribute to its hero” (Kenner 38).  With this gesture in mind, the episode’s flabby sentences and cringe-worthy cliches become endearing a la Bloom himself.  The episode’s inferior style, though, is also a demonstration of Joyce’s extreme facility with language.  Just as it takes a very good piano player to play a song really poorly (you have to know the exact wrong notes to play to make it sound truly awful), it takes an immensely talented writer to intentionally write this badly.  Bearing this in mind, the reader can appreciate the humour embedded in the style of this particular episode.

“Eumaeus” is the first of three episodes comprising Part III of Ulysses, which Joyce titled the “Nostos,” the return.  Appropriately but subtly, the first two lines of the “Nostos” return to the novel’s opening scene on the rooftop of the Martello Tower: the words “brush,” “shaving,” and “buck” all reappear (16.1-2).  As Bloom rouses Stephen, he suggests that they go for some refreshments at the nearby cabman’s shelter near Butt bridge and beside the Custom House, about a 10 minute walk from the site of Stephen’s collapse in Nighttown. 

From the very outset of “Eumaeus,” we halt at the Bloomish inexactitude of the episode’s language.  Reading the incongruous pairing of “orthodox Samaritan” (16.3), we know what is meant by this phrase (something like, “thoroughly charitable”), but the words aren’t quite right: a Samaritan by definition is not Orthodox – they are distinct branches of Judaism.  The wobbly prose style also strains our attention: “For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned” (16.11-14).  And can you blame him?!  Next, consider that Mr. Bloom is described as “anything but a professional whistler” (16.29)...as if there’s such a thing as a professional whistler.  These examples demonstrate the sort of quirks facing readers of this episode, but if you can see the humor in them, you’ll have a much better time with these next 40 pages.

As the two men make their way toward the cabman’s shelter, they encounter a sandstrewer, prompting Bloom to recount his near miss at the beginning of “Circe,” and Stephen meanwhile “thought to think of Ibsen” (16.52).  Throughout much of the episode and for various reasons, the two men are on different wavelengths.  Shame on you for expecting Joyce to give us a wholly satisfying and unironic union between the two characters we’ve been waiting to see united for the entire novel.

As they walk, Bloom, “disgustingly sober” (16.62,) offers Stephen, drunk, some unsolicited advice about visiting prostitutes: “barely permissible once in a while though not as a habitual practice” (16.64-66).  Hilarious yet prudent, Bloom recommends knowing “a little jiujitsu for every contingency” (16.67) and warns Stephen to mind “who [he] got drunk with” because it leaves you “at the tender mercy of others” (16.67, 88-89, 94).  He’s like your hip, non-judgmental uncle!    

As they approach “the back of the customhouse,” Stephen is hailed by Corley, who we know from the “Two Gallants” story in Dubliners.  He is broke and needs a job.  Stephen tells Corley that there will be a position open at Deasy’s school tomorrow or the next day – evidently, Stephen is quitting his teaching job.  Corley is unfit for work in education (he had to repeat two grades in school himself).  Stephen reaches into his pocket to loan Corley some money and is surprised to find “his cash missing” (16.185); he has forgotten that Bloom took it for safekeeping back at Bella Cohen’s.  Stephen is able to find two coins anyhow and gives them to Corley, thinking they are pennies.  Corley tells Stephen (honorably enough) that in fact they are halfcowns (2 ½ shilling coins – not an insignificant sum at all; you might remember that Bloom is lauded for donating exactly this amount (5 shillings) to the Dignams).  Corley then inquires about Bloom, remembering that he has on previous occasion seen him with Boylan, and asks if Bloom can perhaps get him a job with Boylan’s advertising firm.  Corley, I wouldn’t bank on it.

Stephen rejoins Bloom and explains that he gave Corley money for a place to sleep.  Bloom asks Stephen where he himself plans to sleep tonight: “Walking to Sandycove is out of the question. And even supposing you did you won’t get in after what occurred at Westland Row station” (16.249-51).  There seems to have been some sort of altercation, and Bloom observed Buck Mulligan and Haines “give Stephen the slip” (16.266-67) as they caught the last train to Sandycove without him.  Generally, Bloom distrusts Mulligan.  

So, Bloom asks why Stephen left his father’s house, to which Stephen somewhat glibly replies, “to seek misfortune” (16.253).  Bloom tells Stephen that Simon is proud of him.  Stephen mentally recalls his last visit home.  Given that most of this episode’s narration is focalized on Bloom, this “repicturing” of the Dedalus home is one of only a few moments where the narration accesses “Stephen’s mind’s eye” (16.269).  They come across two Italian men in heated conversation, and Bloom notes their beautiful language; Stephen, who of course is fluent, informs him that the two men “were haggling over money” (16.348), perhaps over the price of a whore.  The contrast between Bloom’s ignorance and Stephen’s education is comedic.

Stephen and Bloom finally reach the cabman’s shelter, “an unpretentious wooden structure” tucked under Loopline Bridge.  These little huts provided a place for drivers of carriages and cabs to rest, eat some light fare, and stay sober (they did not serve alcohol - who wants their cabbie hanging out in a pub?).  This particular cabman’s shelter is patronized on this late night by a “miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens” (16.327-28).  The keeper of the cabman’s shelter is understood to be James Fitzharris, a.k.a. Skin-the-goat, a member a famous group of Irish Nationalists called the Invincibles.  Fitzharris drove one of the get-away carriages after the Phoenix Park Murders, the sensationalized 1882 assassination of two British officials. 

As they enter the shelter and take seats in the corner, Bloom and Stephen must strike an odd couple at this late hour of the night, both wearing black suits but separated by a span of 16 years as well as by degrees of inebriation.  Bloom orders coffee and a bun for Stephen.  Fitzharris delivers them to the table, Bloom pushes the coffee and the bun toward Stephen, and the narration regards both items with some dubiosity.  Seizing on this skepticism, Stanley Sultan claims that “the narrator has gone to lengths to indicate that the ‘concoction labelled coffee’ and the ‘so-called roll’ are wine and wafer, the Eucharist in disguise – that the messianic Bloom is unwittingly urging Stephen to accept Communion with God” (Sultan 374).  Perhaps.  If not communion with God, Mr. Bloom is certainly encouraging Stephen to commune with him.

Among the men already in the shelter, a redbearded sailor named D. B. Murphy asks Stephen his name.  When the sailor then asks if he knows Simon Dedalus and Stephen cagily replies “I’ve heard of him” (16.379), Murphy tells a story of seeing Simon Dedalus “shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder” in Stockholm as part of Hengler’s Royal Circus world tour (16.389, 411-3).  He then explains that he has been away at sea for seven years and has just returned home to his loyal wife today on the Rosevean, the three-masted ship we first saw entering Dublin Bay at the very end of “Proteus.”  This man, Murphy, corresponds to Odysseus returning in disguise to Ithaca and inventing an elaborate false identity when he first speaks with Eumaeus.  

The narration focalizes on Bloom imagining the scene of Murphy returning to his wife and home.  Back in the shelter, Murphy asks for a chaw of tobacco.  The narrator expresses some skepticism about Murphy: he “scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident” (16.441) and the discharge document he supposedly received this morning is “not very cleanlooking” (16.454).  Murphy spins further yarns about where he has been and what he has seen in his travels; he produces a “picture postcard from his inside pocket” depicting “a group of savage women in striped loincloths” (16.472, 75-76) from his time in Bolivia.  Bloom subtly “turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark” to reveal that the card was actually sent to a Senor A Boudin in Chile (16.488-89), prompting Bloom to “nourish some suspicions of our friend’s bona fides” (16.498).

Richard Ellmann posits that Murphy demonstrates the difference between the artistic fiction that Joyce has created in Ulysses and the misleading fiction of lies.  Yes, Joyce’s artistic masterpiece has sought to depict in great (but ultimately false) detail a real city filled with real people on a real day, but “with falsisimilitude Murphy would ambush the verisimilitude that is claimed in Ulysses, and turn Aristotle’s imitation of nature into mere fakery” (Ellmann 155).  More simply put, “In Eumaeus the sailor would change the impulse of art to create into the pseudo-artistic impulse to gull” (Ellmann 155).  In other words, Ulysses uses fiction that resembles reality in order to tell truths, whereas Murphy uses fiction simply to deceive.

After considering his own plans to travel, Bloom conceives of “the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company” (16.525), a summer concert tour of English seaside towns that would essentially usurp Boylan’s business relationship with Molly; indeed, he’s plotting a retaliatory counter-usurpation.  He realizes, though, that he would need “some fellow with a bit of bounce” (16.529) to generate publicity for the venture…“But who?” (16.530).  Bloom has seen Stephen earlier today with prominent newspapermen…the wheels will begin to turn in the businessman’s head.

Murphy continues to tell stories about China and Trieste, claiming that he witnessed a murder by stabbing, which turns attention to Skin-the-goat (the Phoenix Park murders were committed with surgical knives).  Bloom asks Murphy if he has seen Gibraltar, Murphy respond with an ambiguous grimace, Bloom inquires further, and Murphy avoids the question and takes a story-telling break.  He claims he wants to settle down and give up the sailor’s life of wandering and mentions that his son has now gone to sea.  Another man in the shelter, perhaps probing Murphy’s veracity, inquires about how old the sailor’s son is.  Murphy guesses his son must be around 18, not unlike Telemachus, furthering the Murphy-Odysseus correspondence.  Murphy then displays a tattoo of an anchor, a face in profile, and the number 16 in blue ink on his chest.  The facial expression on the face can be changed by manipulating the skin, which everyone in the hut admires.  Murphy claims that the tattoo artist, a Greek man named Antonio, was eaten by sharks.  The number 16 has alleged associations with homosexuality.

Then, the same woman in a black straw hat that Bloom saw (but anxiously avoided) at the end of the “Sirens” episode enters the shelter.  Bloom again reacts nervously, hiding behind a newspaper, so I continue to suggest that she is Bridie Kelly, the prostitute to whom Bloom lost his virginity.  He is relieved when Skin-the-goat “made a rude sign to take herself off” (16.722). Bloom the realist/reformer pontificates on prostitution, calling it “a necessary evil” and arguing that the women should be “licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities” (16.742-43).  

The next passage of the conversation (if you are willing to call their interaction to this point a conversation) emphasizes Bloom’s misunderstanding of Stephen.  First, Bloom mistakes Stephen for “a good catholic” (16.748). Then, he attempts to engage with Stephen on the topic of dualism. Stephen quotes St. Thomas Aquinas, asserting that the soul is incorruptible because it is “simple,” meaning without contrariety (Gifford 544).  Bloom, “a bit out of his sublunary depth” (16.762), does not grasp the philosophical context out which Stephen uses the word “simple,” thinking Stephen uses it to mean uncomplicated and therefore rebuts the description of the soul as such. They then briefly debate “the existence of a supernatural God” (16.770-71), and the text tells us “on this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in ages, clashed” (16.774-76).  While perhaps ill-suited to each other, “that they are in many ways different does not prevent fusion, any more than the difference in character between Odysseus and his swineherd prevented them from standing together against the suitors’ tyranny” (Ellmann 154).  At this point in the episode, it seems fair to say that fusion has yet to occur between the two men. Bloom again encourages Stephen to drink the coffee and eat the bun, but Stephen refuses. Unfortunately, “Bloom has succeeded neither in filling his companion’s stomach nor in saving his soul” (Sultan 376).

The text comments on cabman’s shelters’ services to the lower classes (promotion of the temperance movement, musical performances, lectures, so on) and notes that Molly used to play the piano there for a small sum (presumably during the Bloom’s financial rough patch, 1894-96).  Bloom stirs the sugar into the coffee, pushes Stephen once more to try it, and he finally has a taste. Bloom advises Stephen to eat more often, and Stephen asks Bloom to take away the knife because it “reminds [him] of Roman history” (16.816).  Naturally.

Bloom asks Stephen if he buys the sailor’s stories, and then the text reveals Bloom’s inkling that Murphy has recently been released from prison.  He dabbles in racist generalizations, leading to a presentation of Molly as a “Spanish type” (16.879). He compares Irish women unfavorably to the physical “proportions” of the Greek goddess statues he examined at the National Museum earlier in the day.  Bloom also explains that he is unimpressed with Irish women’s fashion.

The others in the shelter discuss various shipwrecks.  Murphy heads outside to drink some rum from his flask and, Bloom suspects, to see if he can flag down the whore.  A nationalist conversation touches on the disuse of Irish harbors, the superiority of Irish natural resources, the forthcoming fall of the British Empire, Ireland’s role in that fall as England’s “Achilles heel” (16.1003), anti-emigration sentiments, and the supreme effectiveness of Irish soldiers.  Murphy claims the Irish to be “the backbone of our empire” (16.1022), which draws rebuke from Skin-the-goat, who “considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served” the British Empire (16.1024-25). An argument between the two men ensues. The text offers access to Bloom’s opinions on the subject of Irish nationalism and the British Empire, he expresses admiration for Fitzharris because he had “brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions,” although he later remembers that Skin-the-goat “merely drove the car” and had not actually used a knife (16.1059, 1066).  Bloom realizes that he himself was just this afternoon assaulted with exactly this sort of nationalist rhetoric and relates to Stephen his encounter with the Citizen.

Bloom offers a statement of political philosophy: “I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due installments plan” (16.1099-1101). Citing historical evidence, Bloom rejects the specious arguments of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, he blames “the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy” (16.1114-15) and goes on to espouse socialist policies of a universal basic income of £300 a year and the sense that all people should “live well … if [they] work” (16.1139-40).  Stephen says simply, “count me out” (16.1148), and Bloom scrambles to clarify that “literary labor” (16.1153) would be included in his scheme.  Stephen offers a wholesale rejection of Irish nationalism and any form of servitude: “You suspect that I may be important because I belong to Ireland [...] But I suspect that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me” (16.1160-65).  Bloom is dumbfounded by this assertion, and Stephen grumpily “shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: ‘We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject’” (16.1169-71). This much-anticipated encounter between our two heroes isn’t going very well, is it?

Bloom, though, has two purposes in continuing to seek unity with Stephen: “fear for the young man” (16.1179) and “to cultivate the acquaintance of someone [...] who could provide [...] intellectual stimulation” (16.1219-21).  In short, Bloom is worried about Stephen (for good reason), and he, as an isolated middle-class armchair intellectual, is lonely.  He waits out the awkwardness by skimming the newspaper.  He initially misreads and is startled by the name “H. du Boyes” because it looks like a bit like “Hugh Boylan,” he sees the results of the Gold Cup, and he reads the notice of Paddy Dignam’s funeral.  A few details amuse him in the write-up of the funeral: his name is misspelled (“L. Boom”), Stephen’s name is included, the typesetter got distracted and included some nonsensical text, and the mysterious M’Intosh makes his obligatory appearance in the episode.  Yawning, Stephen breaks the silence by asking if Deasy’s letter on foot and mouth made it into the paper. It did.

The text reminds us that Stephen’s hand is hurt (16.1296) – he seems to have suffered a mysterious injury between the end of “Oxen” and the beginning of “Circe,” perhaps in an altercation with Buck.  The men in the shelter offer a further mystery related to Parnell being alive on the far side of the planet, poised to return. Like Elvis.  Or Tupac. Further commentary on Parnell leads to a recounting of Bloom’s brief personal interaction with the man - Bloom “handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you” (16.1335-36).  Skin-the-goat curses Kitty O’Shea for initiating Parnell’s downfall, and the men in the shelter discuss the scandalous affair.  You can draw parallels to Molly’s affair with Boylan.  Both Kitty and Molly are half Spanish, and both Boylan and Parnell are depicted as “real m[e]n arriving on the scene” (16.1381-82).  Given the events of this day, there is weight behind the question “can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk?” (16.1385-86).  This question is central to the “Nostos” as Bloom finally returns home to Molly.  

These reminders of his predicament raise the stakes on Bloom’s encounter with Stephen (more on this in a moment), so Bloom produces from his pocket a photograph of Molly “in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom” (16.1429-30).  Bloom presents his wife as a prominent singer but notes that the photo “did not do justice to her figure” (16.1445). He leaves the picture on the table for Stephen to “drink in the beauty for himself” (16.1458-59). Here, you might consider Stanley Sultan’s suggestion that Bloom’s efforts to develop a relationship with Stephen represent “a combination of fatherly solicitude and the desire to use Stephen as a bait for luring Molly from Boylan” (Sultan 369).  Maybe, but it also seems that Bloom here is using the photo of Molly as bait to lure Stephen into friendship, hoping Molly’s beauty gives him more street cred with Stephen.  The text indicates that “the vicinity of the young man [Bloom] certainly relished,” and Stephen “said the picture was handsome” (16.1476-79), prompting thoughts of a “matrimonial tangle” (16.1482). Sultan states, “an affair between Molly and Stephen would bring about the desired relationship between himself and Stephen, eliminate Boylan, and keep Molly happy, which Bloom desires at least as much as he does the pseudo-paternal relationship itself” (Sultan 367).  Taking a bit more wholesome view of the hypothetical love triangle, Richard Ellmann conceives of Bloom, Molly, and Stephen as “a new, three-in-one being, a human improvement upon the holy family as upon the divine trinity”; making the correspondence explicit, Molly and the Virgin Mother Mary share their birthday on September 8th (Ellmann 150). Feel free to buy or sell any or all of these notions as you wish, but there are a few key phrases to consider from the reprise of this topic in lines 1533-52: “unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it,” “the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter,” “she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery,” and “liaisons between still attractive married women [...] and younger men.”   Bloom seems to have more in mind than just providing Stephen with a stale bun and a bad cup of joe.

The story of Bloom recovering Parnell’s hat is repeated, and Parnell’s gracious tone in thanking him is compared favorably to that of John Henry Menton, “whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day” (16.1524-25), which you’ll remember from the end of the “Hades” episode. Menton was a jerk. Parnell was a gentleman.  Bloom worries over the waste of Stephen’s time and talent with prostitutes who might give him an STD.  He continues to misunderstand Stephen’s woozy singing of “Who Goes With Fergus?” at the end of “Circe” for a love interest named “Miss Ferguson” (16.1559-60).  He also returns to his concern over Stephen’s diet and asks when he last ate; Bloom is “literally astounded” (16.1578) to learn that Stephen has not eaten since sometime on June 15th. (But didn’t Stephen eat some of the breakfast Buck prepared in the tower this morning?).  The text remembers younger Bloom’s aspirations to political life, but he ultimately rejects politics as a source of “mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed” (16.1600-01).  

Bloom, realizing it is “high time to be retiring for the night” (16.1604), contemplates whether or how to invite Stephen home with him.  He remembers Molly’s temper when he brought home a gimpy stray dog years ago, and he acknowledges that Stephen has been “a shade standoffish” with him and might not “jump at the idea” (16.1614-16).  At the same time he knows it is “too late for the Sandymount [Goulding home] or Sandycove [Martello Tower] suggestion” (16.1611), so, considering the need for Stephen to find a safe place to lay his head and taking up the photo of Molly, Bloom offers Stephen some cocoa back at his place.  While there is genuine altruism in Bloom’s offer to Stephen, he also immediately begins planning ways of capitalizing on Stephen’s tenor voice alongside Molly’s soprano in “duets in Italian” and “concert tours in English watering resorts” (16.1654, 55).  Bloom pays the bill, and the two men begin to leave the cabman’s shelter.  At the door, Stephen confesses to not knowing something: “why they put [...] chairs upside down on the tables in cafes,” “to which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment’s hesitation, saying straight off: ‘To sweep the floor in the morning’” (16.1709-13).  Point Bloom.

Suggesting that a walk in fresh air will do Stephen well, the two men leave together, arm in arm.  Note that Stephen has previously rejected Cranly’s arm and Buck’s arm, but he accepts Bloom’s, saying “yes” (16.1723).  This affirmative word, “yes,” will feature prominently elsewhere in the “Nostos.”  Finally finding union in each other, Stephen and Bloom walk home “chatting about music” (16.1733) and Molly.  Stephen sings a few bars, and Bloom silently imagines pairing Stephen with Molly in concert and facilitating Stephen’s career.  Furthermore, Bloom imagines the stir it would cause in town for Stephen to be hanging out with the Blooms at Christmas time.  Clearly, Mr. Bloom is aware of the social capital he would gain through association with Stephen Dedalus.  I don’t want to be too cynical about this – Bloom seems genuinely to care for the young man and advises him to “sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner” (16.1868-69), meaning Buck Mulligan.  It’s good fatherly advice.

Joyce, though, always eager to subvert anything approaching sentimentality, deflates the notion of a Stephen-Bloom-Molly trinity by having a horse drop a trinity of “three smoking globes of turds” (16.1876-77).  

The episode concludes with the removed perspective of a driver watching this odd couple make their way north together.  The lyricism of this final image is lovely and worth savoring.

Works Cited

Ellmann, Richard. Ulysses on the Liffey. Oxford University Press, 1978.

Gifford, Don, and Seidman, Robert J. Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses. University of California Press, 2008.

Hayman, David. Ulysses: the Mechanics of Meaning. University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.

Kenner, Hugh. Joyce's Voices. Dalkey Archive Press, 2007.

Sultan, Stanley. The Argument of Ulysses. Wesleyan University Press, 1988.