Episode 17: Ithaca

The “Ithaca” episode continues the action of the novel more or less seamlessly from the end of “Eumaeus” (which itself is continuous from the end of “Circe”).  The time at the start of the present episode is perhaps 1:40 am.  Mr. Bloom and Stephen Dedalus are walking north from the cabman’s shelter to the Bloom’s home in Eccles Street, a .8 mile walk that should take them roughly 20 minutes.  

In The Odyssey, Odysseus has finally returned to his home on the rocky island of Ithaca.  After revealing himself to his son in Eumaeus’s hut, the heroes plan Odysseus’s recapturing of his palace and assault on the suitors; he will remain disguised as a beggar until he strings his mighty bow and shoots an arrow through a dozen axes, proving his strength and precision.

The notion of precision might be useful as we orient ourselves to the style of the “Ithaca” episode.  In the Gilbert schema, Joyce listed the technique for this episode as “catechism (impersonal),” a multivalent reference.  Most obviously, the term catechism applies to the Catholic texts that use a series of questions and answers to define the theological and moral beliefs of the church.  Joyce would have been intimately familiar with this form of writing from his Jesuit education.  Just as influential, though, a catechetical or Socratic method of question and answer would have been central to the classroom instruction Joyce experienced in his late 19th century schooling; indeed, “two recent critics have proposed that the form of ‘Ithaca’ is directly indebted to Richmal Mangnall’s Historical and Miscellaneous Questions, a textbook of encyclopedic knowledge which [...] was still in use in Joyce’s day” (Litz 394).  Back in the Clongowes section of A Portrait, young Stephen Dedalus even daydreams of his own inclusion in Mangnall’s book of questions.  Both types of catechism would have been formative to Joyce’s intellectual development, and this meticulous form replicates Odysseus’s precision with the bow and arrow.

But the episode also playfully pushes this precision to an absurd extreme, an over-the-top exactitude Hugh Kenner credits to Bloom’s favorite weekly magazine, Tit-Bits: “each issue […] contained a page called ‘Tit-Bits Inquiry Column’: answers to questions no one would have thought to ask” (Kenner 145).  More ironic than precise, the tongue-in-cheek Tit-Bits catechism also fits Joyce’s intention in the “Ithaca” episode to provide an appendix of facts, figures, and other information useful to our retrospective understanding of Ulysses while undercutting its own seriousness with obviously exaggerated specificity.

Like all of Ulysses, then, “Ithaca” elevates Bloom into the sphere of timeless epic heroes while also exposing him to be profoundly unexceptional.  Walton Litz explains the effect of this tension well: “It is as if we were viewing Bloom and Stephen from a great height, against a vast backdrop of general human action and knowledge, while at the same time standing next to them and observing every local detail.  It is this ‘parallax’ achieved by the macrocosmic-microcosmic point-of-view which gives the episode the grandeur and sweep that Joyce certainly intended” (Litz 396).

It may be no surprise, then, that “Ithaca,” which Joyce called the “ugly duckling of the book,” was his “favourite episode” in the novel (Budgen 264).  He felt that it had a “tranquilising spectrality” (Letters I 176) and described it as “a mathematico-astronomico-physico-mechanico-geometrico-chemico sublimation of Bloom and Stephen” (Letters I 164).  The episode, on its face, has a cold, bare-bones feel (Joyce listed “skeleton” as the episode’s organ in the Schema), yet it is “supersaturated with Bloom’s humanity, a humanity that is enhanced if anything by the impersonality of the prose” (Litz 393).

As we have seen in episodes such as “Oxen of the Sun,” these revolutionary elements of form and style still must service the actions of plot.  Of course, you may find it frustrating that the text retreats from the intimacy we once felt with Stephen and Bloom at the moment when we most desire access to their unfiltered inner monologues.  What is Stephen thinking and feeling during this hour shared with Bloom? He seems to have warmed up to Bloom enough to leave the cabman’s shelter with him and head toward his home for further conversation, but this comes after years of self-imposed exile and rejection of any sort of union.  From Bloom’s perspective, after spending the day largely alone (and, indeed, after spending many years in much the same condition), he finally has a companion.  What sorts of Bloomian thoughts are running through his mind as Stephen engages with him?  And, later in the episode, how does Bloom feel when forced to finally confront the reality of Molly’s affair?

Ever guarding against sentimentality, Joyce denies us access to these thoughts and feelings, except as filtered through the cold, academic precision of the voices of the interlocutor and the respondent. As Karen Lawrence writes, “‘Circe’ is the past served ‘hot’; ‘Ithaca’ is the past served ‘cold’” (Lawrence 154).

But back to the plot.  Joyce conceived of “Ithaca” as a series of scenes, “and on the early typescripts he blocked out these scenes under the titles ‘street’, ‘kitchen’, ‘garden’, ‘parlour’, ‘bedroom’. (Spielberg qtd. in Litz 398).  I will employ these same titles to help orient you as we experience the homecoming in “Ithaca.” 

STREET

Bloom and Stephen walk together and engage in widely-ranging and apparently lively conversation.  They move through the empty city streets along “parallel courses” (17.1), which means that, while they are certainly aligned, Stephen and Bloom will never intersect (Sultan 384).  We can therefore extrapolate the plot of “Ithaca” from these first few words of the episode: Bloom and Stephen are together, but their parallel trajectories make union ultimately impossible.

But that subtle spoiler shouldn’t stop you from relishing the opportunity to imagine the back and forth these two men share on the topics listed as they walk toward Bloom’s home.  While they don’t agree on all points, both men are independent thinkers, and they admit to the “obtunding influence” (17.25-26) of attraction to women.  With regards to the cause of Stephen’s “collapse” a few hours earlier, Bloom blames alcohol and dancing; Stephen blames the cloud both men saw some 17 hours earlier.  I’ll side with Bloom on this one.

The text reveals that Bloom hasn’t had this sort of friendly conversation very often in his life - and not at all since the death of Rudy in January of ‘94.  Bloom attributes this dearth of friendship to the simple fact that we have fewer friends as we age.  While that’s true for many, this revelation of the extent and duration of Bloom’s isolation only serves to illuminate his endurance of spirit and confidence.  

Arriving at 7 Eccles St., Bloom realizes that he does not have the key to his own home; however, he overcomes the sort of paralysis that has been so thematically central to Joyce’s work since the Dubliners stories by devising “a stratagem” (17.84) that is both active (in solving the problem for himself) and passive (in avoiding a confrontation with Molly).  He climbs over the railing at the front of the house, drops down to the basement level of the house, and enters his home via the scullery door.  You can see these metal railings beside the front door in this Google Maps Street View of Eccles Street.  Testifying to Joyce’s verisimilitude, he inquired in a letter to his Aunt Josephine: “Is it possible for an ordinary person to climb over the area railings of no 7 Eccles street, either from the path or the steps, lower himself down from the lowest part of the railings till his feet are within 2 feet or 3 of the ground and drop unhurt?” (Letters I 175).  Joyce had witnessed his friend Byrne (the model for Cranly’s character in Portrait) accomplish this feat years before, but Byrne was a strapping fellow.  Bloom, whom we learn here is 5’9 ½ and 158 pounds, is not particularly athletic.  That said, he isn’t as pudgy as we might have assumed from earlier passages; for context, the average height of men at the turn of the century was 5’7 (Parkinson).  Bloom, therefore, is pretty tall for his era.  Joyce intended for Bloom to grow in stature in the reader’s mind here at the end of the novel.

KITCHEN

In the kitchen, Bloom lights a match, a gas flame, and then a candle.  He takes the candle to the front door and welcomes Stephen into his home.  You might consider this moment to be the realization of Stephen’s prophetic dream first recalled in “Proteus”: “last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. [...] That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread.  You will see who” (3.365-69).  Having brought Stephen from Nighttown’s “street of harlots” to the “open hallway” of 7 Eccles Street, Stephen’s Haroun al Raschid - an upright man of justice who promotes wisdom and enlightened thinking, a king who walks among commoners - is Mr. Leopold Bloom.

As Mr. Bloom lights the fire in his coal stove, Stephen thinks of other parental figures who have previously lit fires for him throughout his life.  Bloom begins to fill the kettle with water, and the text provides an overprecise explanation of the water’s municipal origins.  In the subsequent ode to water, you may detect similarities between the qualities Bloom admires in water and characteristics we have come to admire in Bloom himself: “independence,” “persever[ance],” “solidity,” “docility,” and “utility” (17.189-222). Like water, Bloom is flexible, varied, interesting, and multifaceted.  

Bloom washes his hands with his lemon soap and offers Stephen the tap to do likewise.  Stephen refuses.  We might wonder if Stephen’s hydrophobia goes back to being shouldered into the cold, slimy pond scum at Clongowes, or perhaps it signifies his rejection of his Christian baptism.  Regardless, he hasn’t had a bath since October (17.239), eight months ago…ew.  Bloom refrains from lecturing Stephen on the virtues of hygiene and good diet, but the text offers Bloom’s good advice regarding the “advantages” (17.277) of shaving at night.  

From a kitchen shelf bearing evidence of Boylan’s visit this afternoon, Bloom takes a tin of Epp’s cocoa powder.  Among the other evidence of Boylan that Bloom observes (Molly didn’t even bother to tidy up after!), he focuses on the betting tickets from the Ascot Gold Cup and notes the race’s impact on his day.  

Out of good hospitality, Bloom uses Molly’s fine breakfast cream to make the cocoa, and he refrains from using his favored mustache mug, instead selecting “a cup identical with that of his guest” (17.563).  Stephen drinks the “Epp’s massproduct” (17.369), which suggests the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass.  Stephen has for so long (and as recently as the previous episode) fought against any sort of atonement (eucharistic or otherwise), but he now accepts a posture of openness to this gift of Bloom’s kindness.  As Stanley Sultan posits, “Stephen has in this episode accepted the sacrament” and “thus, for the remainder of his presence in the novel, he talks freely, listens attentively, sings, and writes in Gaelic, showing ease, warmth, interest” (Sultan 389).

The two men drink their cocoa in silence, Bloom “erroneously” assuming that Stephen is “engaged in mental composition” (17.383-84).  Bloom “reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life” (17.384-87).  You can do the same with Ulysses - I myself have turned to this novel many times to help me sort through a difficult life event, including the miscarriage of our first child and a close friend’s father’s suicide.  This novel can indeed serve as “literature of instruction” of the highest order.

Bloom then recalls two of his own poetic works, a limerick and a love poem.

We learn that Bloom is 38 years old and Stephen is 22, but, with time, that “disparity diminish[es]” (17.451).  The subsequent calculations related to their ages render them eternal, infinite.

We have a reprise of Stephen and Bloom’s first meeting, first described back in “Oxen” (14.1371-78).  Five-year-old Stephen, unsure of Bloom, was shyly “reluctant to give his hand in salutation” (17.469-70).  Their second encounter, when Stephen was 10, seems to have established a connection between the two; Stephen invited Bloom to have dinner at the Dedalus home.  Simon (awkwardly, we must imagine, even if graciously) “seconded” (17.474) his son’s invitation.  Bloom politely “declined” (17.476) this offer.

Bloom and Stephen compare notes on a mutual acquaintance from long ago, Mrs. Dante Riordan.  You may recall that Dante was Stephen’s nanny and featured in the Christmas dinner scene in A Portrait; Mrs. Riordan later lived in the same building (the City Arms Hotel) as the Blooms.  She died eight years ago.  

Recalling these moments from younger days prompts Bloom to think that maybe he’s lost a step, so he considers getting back into the habit of working out using Sandow’s indoor exercise regimen.  He’s thought of doing so previously in the day, during both the “Calypso” and “Circe” episodes.  We learn that he excelled in gymnastics back in High school due to his “abnormally developed abdominal muscles” (17.523-24).  Our guy had a six pack! 

In a funny little riddle, we learn that “[Bloom] thought that [Stephen] thought that [Bloom] was a jew whereas [Bloom] knew that [Stephen] knew that [Bloom] knew that [Stephen] was not” (17.530-31).  Or, if Stephen knows that Bloom is not a practicing Jew, perhaps the second part could also be: “[Stephen] knew that [Stephen] knew that [Bloom] knew that [Bloom] was not.”  You can tinker with this puzzle for a while.  

We also learn the names of both men’s parents and their respective histories pertaining to baptism.  They were each baptized by the same man, “the reverend Charles Malone C. C.” and in the same place, “the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar” (17.545-46).  Malone performed Bloom’s third and final baptism, representing his conversion to Catholicism prior to marrying Molly.   Bloom’s first baptism was into the Irish Church, representing his father’s conversion to Protestantism upon immigrating to Ireland.  His second baptism seems to have been performed by friends (or at least laypeople) using the sacred water from a natural well in Swords, a town just north of the Dublin airport.

The text presents the gulf between their respective academic achievements: Bloom has a high school education, and Stephen has multiple university degrees.  In terms of temperament, the text assigns Bloom “the scientific” and Stephen “the artistic” (17.560), although we know that “there’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom” (10.582-83).  Along those lines, Bloom’s aesthetic principles in “the modern art of advertisement” consist of “maximum visibility,” the ability for people to “decipher” meaning, and the “magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention” (17.581-84).  Advertising 101.  He then compares the relative qualities of a few ads, some of which you might recall from earlier in the novel.  For example, Bloom contemplated the Kino’s trousers ad posted on a rowboat floating in the Liffey when he crossed O’Connell bridge back in “Lestrygonians” (8.90).  He abhors the placement of the Plumtree’s Potted Meat ad beneath the obituaries in the newspaper.

The two men share creative thoughts: Bloom explains his idea for a Hely’s ad with two women writing in a showcart pulled through town, and Stephen offers a dramatic scene between a young man and a young woman in a firelit hotel lobby.  The woman in this scene is writing “Queen’s Hotel” over and over again on a sheet of paper, which triggers Bloom to think of his father’s suicide in The Queen’s Hotel in Ennis, County Clare.  Stephen, feeling perhaps more open and at ease than we’ve ever seen him, then offers his “Parable of the Plums” (the same story he told to the newspaper guys at the end of “Aeolus”).  

The focus then turns to Bloom’s relationship with Molly.  He contemplates activities they might enjoy together, catalogues examples of Molly’s lack of education and knowledge, and presents his various efforts “to remedy this state of comparative ignorance” (17.693).  

Bloom and Stephen discuss “seeker[s] of pure truth” (17.716), and their Jewish and Aristotelian characters are bridged by Moses Maimonides, who sought to “reconcile Aristotelian reason and Hebraic revelation” (Gifford 576), as well as Aristotle himself, who legend has it “had been a  pupil of a rabbinical philosopher” (17.718).  They exchange snippets of songs in Irish and Hebrew and write out alphabetic characters from those languages on a blank second to last page in Sweets of Sin, the erotic book Bloom got for Molly back in “Wandering Rocks.”  Bloom is careful to conceal the title of this book from Stephen.  They continue to draw connections between their respective cultural backgrounds, the Irish and the Jews.  As Hugh Kenner explains, “Each people had a racial identity, Semitic, Celtic; each had a minute homeland boasting sacred sanctions, each a history of being overwhelmed but not disappearing” (Kenner 137).

After further regarding each other, and after Stephen finishes his cup of cocoa, Bloom encourages Stephen to sing a bit.  Stephen does so, but his choice of song is curious.  The “Little Harry Hughes” song tells an apocryphal anti-Semitic story of “Hugh of Lincoln, supposedly crucified by Jews c 1255” (Gifford 579).  Stephen’s selection of this particularly objectionable song to sing in Bloom’s home, especially as the two men seem to be getting along so well, is curious.  Perhaps it conveys a sense of Stephen’s rising “suspicion and withdrawal [...] as if Bloom were a Cyclops who eats his guests” (Osteen 401).  Hugh Kenner suggests that Bloom’s designs on Stephen as a surrogate son present a “danger” to Stephen’s freedom and independence.  “Bearing the danger in mind, we can understand why Stephen sings the ballad about the imperiled Christian boy in the Jew’s habitation” (Kenner 139).

The role of “the jew’s daughter” (17.813) in the song prompts Bloom to think about Milly in childhood and, now, in a budding romantic relationship with “a local student” (17.883), Bannon, down in Mullingar.  As Bloom ponders Milly’s departure into adulthood, he observes the departure of his cat.  In light of these departures, and in one of the novel’s most anticipated moments, Bloom invites Stephen to stay the night.  Stephen “promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully” says no, declining the offer in terms which echo Bloom’s own refusal of young Stephen’s dinner invitation a dozen years prior.  Bloom then returns Stephen’s money rounded up by a penny in a sort of reverse interest, making Bloom therefore the exact opposite of the archetypal usurious Jew.  This inverse interest amplifies the net result of this encounter: “Bloom gives Stephen more than he got” (Osteen 404).

But since Stephen won’t stay with Bloom in his home, they negotiate “counterproposals” (17.960), arriving at a series of agreements and exchanges which are “truly reciprocal: each gives and each receives, creating an entirely new phenomenon out of their mutual relationship [...], a balanced social exchange” (Osteen 403).  Now, that’s assuming the “counterproposals” are sincere.  The questions and answers that follow suggest that this night’s encounter between Stephen and Bloom is the end rather than a beginning of a relationship: the coin that Bloom marked never returned to him, and the clown was not Bloom’s son.  Likewise, Stephen will not return, nor is he Bloom’s son.

Bloom reveals that he is often depressed by the failure of his optimism and large-scale ambitions to improve the world, but he finds solace “that as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void” (17.1019-20).  Bloomsday itself, then, is the cure for existential dejection.  

GARDEN

As Bloom leads Stephen out of the kitchen and into the garden/backyard, the text alludes to the biblical exodus of the Jews out of Egypt, the Christian vespers services, and the emergence out of hell into view of heaven’s stars at the end of Dante’s Inferno.  The two men “confront” the night sky, and Joyce provides one of his most beautiful sentences: “The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit” (17.1039).  Pwah.  Prose doesn’t get much better than that.  Getting to that line alone has to make all of your hours of effort and frustration in reading this novel feel worthwhile.

Meditations on constellations and planets follow.  Joyce wrote in a letter that the effect of the “Ithaca” episode’s cold, hyper-rational style is that “Bloom and Stephen thereby become heavenly bodies, wanderers like the stars at which they gaze” (Letters I 160).  Sublime notions of the universe’s vastness and our place within it bring Bloom back to his intention years ago to “square the circle,” leading him to encounter 9 raised to the 9th power and to the 9th power again, a number that would require “33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper” (17.1075-76) to represent in integers.  This project of Bloom’s (like this little project of my own here on this site), makes him feel small.

Astrological and astronomical ideas continue, and then the men notice a lighted lamp in the house, which reminds us of Molly’s presence looming (no Odyssey pun intended) upstairs as well as in the “Penelope” episode to come.

The two men share the intimate male bonding experience of peeing together outside; we learn that Bloom was a champion urinator in high school and remains thusly potent.  While relieving themselves, a shooting star streaks through the night sky above.  If you are inclined to read prophetic meaning into these sorts of celestial events, the fact that the star moves “towards the zodiacal sign of Leo” (17.1213) augurs well for Bloom.  

Bloom unlocks the back gate, the two men shake hands, and Stephen departs as the bells of St. George’s church chime twice, signifying 2:30 am.  The two men translate the sound of the bells just as they did at 8:45 am this morning (“Liliata rutilantium…” and “Heigho, heigho”), which we could interpret to mean that neither character has been significantly changed from this encounter - that would be a bummer, even for a reader of Joyce.  More positively, the text describes Stephen’s “retreating feet” echoing in the empty street like the sound of a “Jew’s harp,” so his departure’s “double vibration” (17.1243-44) could signify that the impact of these hours will reverberate within both men long after this night. 

Any sense of closure or completion, however, is complicated by our curiosity over where, exactly, Stephen goes after leaving Bloom’s house.  I put this question to the Trinity College Dublin professor Terence Brown, who was kind enough to give 23-year-old me an hour of his time when I showed up in his office back in 2006.  Professor Brown suggested that, having encountered his subject, Stephen is off to write Ulysses.  Indeed, he may finally be prepared to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race.

Bloom, meanwhile, is left “alone” and feeling “the cold of interstellar space” (17.1245-46).  The text informs us that everyone else is either asleep or dead, so we are left with Bloom.  And he is left, finally, with Molly. 

PARLOUR

Bloom takes a deep breath, walks through the garden, enters and closes the back door, and uses his candle to light his way through the kitchen, up the stairs, and into the front parlour.  As he enters the parlour, he bonks his head on “a projecting angle” of “the walnut sideboard” (17.1285) which has been moved during the day.  Indeed, since Bloom left home this morning, much of the furniture in this room has been rearranged, apparently by Boylan and Molly.  In the placement of the two chairs, Bloom finds “circumstantial evidence” (17.1300-01) of the afternoon’s tryst.  Molly’s infidelity, like the keyboard of the piano, is “exposed” (17.1303).

Bloom lights incense to cleanse his home of its impurities.  The text notes the presence of three wedding gifts on the mantel: a clock, a dwarf tree, and an embalmed owl.  We/Bloom might be heartened by these reminders that he and Molly have been bound together for 15 years by the public commitment of marriage vows, but we/he might also be disheartened by the fact that the clock hasn’t worked since 1896, the tree’s growth has been stunted, and the owl is dead.  Here, we appreciate that ever since the Epiphanies, “it was Joyce’s unique gift that he could turn the substance of ordinary life into something like myth, not only through the use of ‘parallels’ and allusions but through direct transformation” (Litz 403).  These wedding gifts, while merely the stuff of normal life, are infused with elegant meaning by Joyce’s art. 

Bloom then looks at himself in the mirror.  A riddle, “Brothers and sisters he had none / Yet that man’s father was his grandfather’s son” (17.1352-3) emphasizes that he is patrilineally alone.  Seeing his reflection, Bloom notes that he (and all men, really) increasingly resemble our fathers.  He also observes his bookshelf in the mirror, and his personal library is catalogued.  You might find in these titles the origins of thoughts and interests Bloom has expressed over the course of the day.  

Bloom undresses himself, feels his bee sting, and finds in his waistcoat pocket a shilling coin left from his attendance of Mrs. Sinico’s funeral back in October (readers of Dubliners will remember her death in “A Painful Case”).  This coin prompts the text to “compile the budget for 16 June 1904” (17.1455).

In examining this ledger, you may immediately note some inaccuracies: the 11s Bloom spent in Bella Cohen’s brothel are entirely omitted and the 1s cost of a chocolate bar seems massively inflated.  The expense of at least one tramfare or trainfare also seems to be missing; if we assume that he arrived at the Holles Street Maternity Hospital via tram from Sandymount, then the budget omits the late night fare from Westland Row Station to Amiens Street Station (en route to Nighttown with Stephen et al).  We might be surprised and/or frustrated to find errors within this budget - which should be an objective artifact - within a novel and an episode so exacting with its details.  Marc Osteen suggests that Joyce here is prompting the reader to assume the role of bookkeeper as we read and re-read Ulysses; it is as if Joyce is teasing us, like he’s saying to us, “this isn’t quite right, is it? Well, go on, reread the book and fix it for me.”  However, “like Bloom’s budget, the reader’s [budget] will leave gaps; the book can never be fully balanced or ended, because perfect balance would mark the end of bookkeeping, the end of reading” (Osteen 413).  And I for one don’t ever want to be finished reading this novel.

There are a few coincidences to be found in the budget.  Most notably, Bloom’s commission received from the Freeman’s Journal earlier today is exactly the same as the payment Molly will earn from the upcoming concert tour (a detail we take from a snippet of Boylan’s call with his secretary back in “Wandering Rocks”(10.392)).  “This concealed symmetry again typifies the balancing impulse that pervades “Ithaca”; more importantly, it suggests an equality of earning power between the Blooms that is manifest in a ‘balance of power’ (Osteen 412) within their marriage.

Bloom takes off his boots, picks off part of a “protruding part of the great toenail” (17.1489), and takes a whiff.  The smell reminds him of his lifelong “ultimate ambition” (17.1497) to own “a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse” (17.1504-05) in the countryside.  The text describes this dream house, “Bloom Cottage” (17.1580), as well as the idealized Mr. Bloom who might live there, all in great detail and to hilarious effect.  One aspect of this vision involves Bloom serving as “justice of the peace” (17.1610) to neighboring “county families and landed gentry” (17.1606-07).  This role suits Bloom because of his “innate love of rectitude” (17.163), which the text demonstrates by listing a history of his religious and political affiliations.  

The text pivots then to how Bloom might pay for such a home, which prompts the presentation of a series of entrepreneurial ideas, some of which we have encountered in Bloom’s conversations or thoughts earlier in the day.  Many of these notions, including taking advantage of the time difference between the site of the Ascot Gold Cup in England (Greenwich time) and in Dublin (Dunsink time) to learn the result of the race and place bets accordingly, are ingenious.  Other ideas are downright prescient, especially those related to renewable energy, mixed-use real estate development, riverboat tourism, and streamlining the transportation of goods for improved access to a global economy.  These are million dollar ideas.  Or, he could always just discover “a goldseam of inexhaustible ore” (17.1753).

Regardless, Bloom has always found it helpful to think about these sorts of big projects prior to getting in bed because doing so “alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and renovated vitality” (17.1757-58).  He appropriately values the quality of his slumber because we spend 2/7ths of our life asleep; he fears sleep-walking his way into suicide or murder.  His final thoughts before bed tend to focus on creating the perfect ad.  He is devoted to his craft.

The text then examines the contents of Bloom’s drawers.  The first drawer contains a hodgepodge of sentimental and ignominious items: Milly’s childhood drawing notebook, photos of Queen Alexandra (wife of Edward VII) and Maud Branscombe (actress and beauty), a Christmas card, some office supplies, a sandglass, a sealed note with Bloom’s prediction of the effects of an 1886 Home Rule bill (which was never actually passed), a bazaar ticket, a letter from young Milly, heirlooms from each of his parents, the three previous letters from Martha Clifford along with her name and address in code, an article on “corporal chastisement in girls’ schools” (17.1802-03), a pink ribbon, two condoms, coins and lottery tickets from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, two pornographic photocards, an article on restoring old boots, a collector’s stamp of Queen Victoria, a chart with Bloom’s body measurements before and after beginning Sandow’s exercises (which would suggest that, while Bloom’s workout routine yielded positive results, he is oddly proportioned...or else Joyce didn’t get these numbers right), and a prospectus for the Wonderworker, a product claiming to mitigate rectal complaints.  Bloom adds today’s letter from Martha Clifford to this drawer, and the text nudges us in algebraic terms to discover her identity.  Good luck.

Bloom is pleased to think that a few women have found him attractive today: Josie Breen, nurse Callan, and Gerty McDowell.  He’s still got it.

The second drawer contains official documents, including his birth certificate (his middle name is Paula!), a life insurance policy, a bank statement, a certificate pertaining to his possession of Canadian government bonds, and papers related to his purchase of plot at Glasnevin cemetery.  From these documents, we can discern Bloom’s relative wealth.  His bank account balance of  £18, 14 s, 6 d (17.1862-63) represents nearly half a year of Stephen’s wages as a teacher and is equivalent to around $5,500 today.  Bloom has also invested in Canadian bonds (17.1864), generating annual income of £36 (Gifford 597) - roughly $10,800 today - more than enough to cover a year of rent on 7 Eccles Street (which was £28 annually (Gifford 597).  In short, we learn that Bloom is in pretty good shape financially.  Again, his stature grows here at the end of the novel.

The second drawer also contains some family items, such as a public notice of his father’s official name change from Virag to Bloom, a daguerrotype photo of his father and grandfather taken in Hungary in 1852, a Jewish text for the Passover Seder, and his father’s suicide note.  Phrases from this note pass through Bloom’s mind, prompting him to feel some “remorse” (17.1893) for disrespecting Jewish laws and customs in his youth.  He also recalls his father telling him at age six the story of the displacement and wandering that took him from Hungary, through Austria and Italy, into England, and finally to Ireland; however, the text tells us that years and distraction have “obliterated the memory of these migrations” (17.1916) in Bloom’s mind, which prompts some questions into the voice and intelligence behind these questions and answers.  In some passages, the interrogator as well as the respondent seem to have access to Bloom’s mind, but it seems here that at least the respondent has some measure of omniscience that transcends what Bloom knows or remembers.  Elsewhere, the respondent is limited to Bloom’s perspective and knowledge. 

Some of Bloom’s father’s “idiosyncrasies” (17.1921) pertaining to forgetfulness are listed, including neglecting to take off his hat at the table, lifting and tilting his plate to drink his melted ice cream, and using torn bits of paper as a napkin.  (Aware of Bloom’s own “idiosyncrasies,” we might feel like those listed here are small potatoes.)  Mr. Bloom shows his age by nearsightedly counting coins by hand and by belching after a meal.  Regardless of these faults and quirks, he feels consoled by the evidence of his financial solvency: “the endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the possession of scrip” (17.1931-32).

The text catalogues various impoverished sorts of people, beginning with his own first job (“hawker of imitation jewelry” (17.1937)) and progressing through various other unfortunate figures we have encountered over the course of the day.  The “indignities” (17.1948) suffered by these people include being ignored by women and former friends, being barked at by stray dogs, and having rotten vegetables thrown at them.

If Bloom were to find himself in this sort of destitution, he would prefer to leave than commit suicide.  As the text goes on to consider the possibility of Bloom’s “departure” (17.1958), we might here acknowledge that the style and sesquipedalian voice of this episode obfuscate clarity and meaning in a frustrating way; clearly, we have lots of questions we’d like answered by this point in the novel - whether Bloom will stay with Molly or leave her is chief among them - but the interrogator of “Ithaca” doesn’t often ask the right questions, nor does the answerer always respond directly or satisfactorily.  Hey, but if Bloom were to disappear, somebody could earn £5 by supplying “information leading to his discovery” (17.2005).  Good to know.  

If Bloom were to leave, he would represent the trope of the wandering Jew to an absurd extreme by eternally traversing the cosmos.  For now, Bloom decides against departure because it is impractical (too dark and dangerous at this hour of night) and because he can get into bed with Molly.  Prior to getting up and going to the bedroom, Bloomsday is thoroughly but briefly “recapitulate[d]” (17.2043) in biblical terms and in chronological order.  In an allusion to The Odyssey, when Zeus offers a thunderclap to signal his approval of Odysseus stringing his bow and thereby revealing his return to Ithaca, Bloom’s wooden table emits a “loud lone crack” (17.2061).  The universe approves of Bloom’s return and decision to stay.  

The mystery of the man in the brown macintosh makes its final appearance (sorry, no resolution), and Bloom lists the day’s other loose ends, failures, and unfinished business: the Keyes ad renewal hasn’t been finalized, he was hoping to get some free tea from Kernan, he was unable to determine the degree of anatomical realism of the Greek goddess statues in the National Museum, and he did not see the performance of Leah.

BEDROOM

Bloom quietly enters his bedroom carrying his clothes, and the face of his late father-in-law pops into his mind.  The next passage is fascinating but a bit tricky to decipher: “what recurrent impression of the same were possible by hypothesis?” (17.2084).  If we understand “the same” to refer to Maj. Tweedy, then this answer implies that Bloom has watched his father-in-law leave and return via train.  If we understand “the same” to refer simply to “an absent face,” then perhaps Bloom is still thinking about Stephen.  Details from the rest of this passage contribute to this reading: the Amiens street train station is likely where Bloom began following Stephen “along parallel lines” (17.2086) to Nighttown, and you’ll remember that the first line of this episode described Bloom and Stephen’s “parallel courses” (17.1).  So, the “hypothesis” of Ulysses: what would happen if someone like Stephen Dedalus met someone like Leopold Bloom?  The examination of Joyce’s hypothesis (i.e., the study of this novel) will go on to “infinity” (17.2086).

Bloom notices Molly’s clothes discarded on the trunk at the foot of their bed and glances around the room at other objects, including a wobbly commode.  He finishes undressing himself, puts on his “long white nightshirt” (17.2111) and, finally, gets in bed with simultaneous caution and reverence.  He notices that Molly changed the sheets prior to Boylan’s visit, but she did not clean the bed afterwards, leaving “some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed” (1724-25).  In the mattress, he feels “the imprint of a human form, male, not his” (17.2124), and he is amused to think that Boylan “imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series” (17.2127-28). 

The text then supplies a list of men included in this “preceding series” (17.2132), but the criteria of this list is unclear: perhaps these men are all of Molly’s former lovers?  Previous sexual affairs?  Suitors?  Men who have at one time or another been sexually attracted to Molly?  Hugh Kenner describes it as “a list of past occasions for twinges of Bloomian jealousy, and there is no ground for supposing that the hospitality of Molly’s bed has been extended to anyone but her husband and Boylan” (Kenner 143).  This list of 25 men indicates that Bloom is aware of much of Molly’s romantic life, but, as “Penelope” will reveal, he doesn’t know everything.  

Concerning Boylan, Bloom efficiently labels him as “a bounder,” a “billsticker,” “a bester,” and “a boaster” (17.2145-46) and then reflects on his “antagonistic sentiments” (17.2154) toward this usurper.  He feels “envy” over Molly and Boylan’s sexual intercourse and “jealousy” over the fresh attraction Molly feels toward this other man.  More nuanced, Bloom is affected by “abnegation” or self-denial, implying that he will refuse confrontation with Boylan for a few reasons: their “acquaintance” (17.2170) and interactions around town, an awareness of racial tension, and a reluctance to blow up Molly’s music tour (in part because of its prospective financial success).  Most Bloomian, he feels “equanimity” (mental calm) in accepting extramarital sex as a “natural act of a nature expressed” (17.2178), no worse than any number of other illicit behaviors.  In terms of “retribution” (17.2200), he will not take violent action, but he leaves open the future possibility of divorce, exposure, lawsuit, and blackmail.  Bloom may seek to build his own advertising agency to rival Boylan’s shop, and he may introduce Stephen to Molly as a “rival agent of intimacy” (17.2207-08).  He justifies these feelings to himself in terms of biology and the various grammatical flexibility of the word “fucked.”  He possesses elevated views pertaining to “the futility of triumph” (17.2224) given “the apathy of the stars” (17.2226) toward infinitely small human dramas.  If we are holding Bloom’s return home in correspondence to Odysseus’s gruesome slaughter of his rivals, this section demonstrates Joyce’s recasting of the hero as a figure of empathy, enlightenment, and endurance.

As a reward for these progressive attitudes, Bloom’s “antagonistic sentiments” are “reduced” and “converge” into a feeling of “satisfaction” (17.2227-29).  After all, isn’t that simply a better way to feel?  As Bloom said back in the “Cyclops” episode, “Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life. [...] Love” (12.1481-85).  When he kisses Molly’s bottom, itself described as a promised land “redolent of milk and honey” (17.2232-33), Bloom chooses love.

Molly rouses from sleep and asks Bloom about his day.  He tells her about everything except his correspondence with Martha Clifford, his confrontation with the Citizen, his encounter with Gerty MacDowell, and (we assume) his visit to Nighttown.  He lies and tells her that he saw Leah and that he ate supper after the performance at Wynn’s hotel, where he met Stephen Dedalus, who “emerged as the salient point of his narration” (17.2269).

As Bloom and Molly speak, both are aware of the fact that they have not had “complete carnal intercourse” (17.2278) since five weeks prior to Rudy’s birth; it has therefore been “10 years, 5 months and 18 days” (17.2282) since Bloom has ejaculated inside Molly.  Adding to the distance within their marriage, Bloom and Molly have not had “complete mental intercourse” (17.2285) since nine months ago when Milly had her first period, which bonded Milly to Molly.  Since that time, Bloom has felt limitations on his “liberty of action” (17.2291-2) and has been “interrogated” (17.2294) each time he left the house; in short, his wife and daughter have been pestering him.

The text pans out again to a sublime, elevated perspective as Mr. Bloom and Molly are positioned on the planet and moving through the cosmos.  Bloom is “weary” (17.2319) from his travels - justifiably so!  From my attempts to recreate Bloom’s day, I think he must have walked around 9 miles.  

In a fun, final flourish, the text alludes to Sinbad the Sailor, an Odysseus-styled hero in One Thousand and One Nights (as well as in a popular Dublin pantomime) who returns home at the end of each of his adventurous voyages.  Stanley Sultan identifies the rhymed companions with whom Bloom/Sinbad has travelled as “the sailor, W. B. Murphy; the tailor, his friend George Mesias, in whose shop he met Boylan; the jailer, Alf Bergen the court clerk; the nailer, Corny Kelleher, the undertaker; the failer, Simon Dedalus; the bailer, Martin Cunningham, who twice during the day saved him from predicaments; the hailer, Lenehan; the railer, the citizen; the ‘phthailer,’ a friend who died from ‘phthisis’” (Sultan 413).  The allusion continues with the roc, a huge mythical bird; in one story, Sinbad finds a roc’s egg with a circumference of fifty paces (Gifford 606).

The answer to the episode’s final question, a large dot, might not appear as Joyce intended in your edition of the novel.  This is how it should look:

Where?

●

There are many interpretations of this dot.  Maybe it is the roc’s egg.  Perhaps it is a massive period, indicating the final end to Bloomsday and serving as a counterpoint (literally) to the absence of punctuation in “Penelope.”  Maybe the dot is Bloom as “the manchild in the womb” (17.2317-18), “from which he shall emerge the next day with all the fresh potentialities of Everyman,” making this “final moment of ‘Ithaca’ both an end and a beginning” (Litz 404).  The dot could also be Molly’s anus, near which Bloom’s head rests.  

Or, in keeping with Joyce’s project, the ● is the earth viewed from space: tiny and unimportant despite the massive effort this novel has exerted towards convincing its readers that every day is a universe all its own.  In the end, the paradoxical “square round” (17.2328) Ulysses is the novel’s demonstration of Mr. Bloom’s simultaneous significance and insignificance - Joyce’s mystical fusion of the eternal and transient qualities of human life. 

Works Cited

Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce.  ed. Stuart Gilbert.  Viking Press, 1966.

Kenner, Hugh. Ulysses. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Lawrence, Karen. The Odyssey of Style in Ulysses. Princeton University Press, 1981.

Litz, Walton. “Ithaca.” James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays. Ed. Hart, Clive, and David Hayman.

University of California Press, 1977.

Osteen, Mark. The Economy of "Ulysses": Making Both Ends Meet. Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Parkinson, Caroline. “Men's Average Height 'up 11cm since 1870s'.” BBC News, BBC, 2 Sept.

2013, www.bbc.com/news/health-23896855.

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