James Joyce

"An Encounter": due bambini (Joyce e Mahony) giocano agli indiani e vanno a zonzo; incontrano un uomo che parla loro a lungo dei fatti della vita, ma Mahony è più preso dalla caccia ad un gatto;

"Araby": Joyce è innamorato della sorella di Mangan, e promette di portarle qualcosa dal ba zaar quando ci andrà; ottiene il permesso dallo zio, ma poi nel negozio non trova il coraggio di comprare nulla;

"Eveline": Eveline fugge di casa (dove il padre la maltratta) con un marinaio, ma sul punto di imbarcarsi si rende conto di cosa si lascia dietro e resta a guardare il suo marinaio salire trascinato dalla folla.

"After the Race": all'arrivo d'una gara automobilistica, quattro uomini di diversa nazionalità cercano svago nei locali della città;

"Two Gallants": Leneham e Corley, due giovani galanti, parlano di donne: Corley ne segue e corteggia una e poi torna con in mano una moneta d'oro;

"The Boarding House": la signora Moarey conduce una pensione pensando all'avvenire della figlia e, quando questa seduce un onesto impiegato, lo obbliga a sposarla;

"A Little Cloud": Little Cahndler è un timido umile marito, che ha dovuto ridimensionare la sua passione per la letteratura, che, dopo tanto tempo, rivede l'amico Ignatius Gallagher, ora giornalista londinese, ma poi deve tornare bruscamente alla meschina realtà di casa sua, con la moglie che lo rimprovera perché ha fatto piangere il bambino leggendogli delle poesie;

"Counterparts": l'impiegato Farrington si ribella alla tirannia del suo capo, Allenpre, e viene licenziato; al pub ne ride con gli amici, ma a casa, ubriaco, si sfoga picchiando il figlioletto che l'ha atteso per preparargli la cena;

"Clay": l'anziana Maria va a portare i regali di Natale ai figli di Joe, che lei vide crescere, e la famiglia l'accoglie con gioia;

"A Painful case": James Duffy s'innamora, ricambiato, d'una donna sposata, ma quando si rende conto che stanno per diventare troppo intimi, decide di troncare la relazione; lei ne muore di dolore e lui, ricordando i passati appuntamenti platonici, capisce d'essere solo;

" Ivy Day In The Commitee Room ": nel quartier generale d'un candidato alle elezioni politiche: chiacchiere;

"A Mother": la giovane Kathleen Kearney viene assunta per quattro concerti organizzati dal signor Honolan, sennonché la madre decide di difendere i suoi interessi e, temendo che non le venga pagato il dovuto, minaccia a Honolan un'astensione nel bel mezzo del terzo concerto: dapprima gli organizzatori cedono, ma poi, visto che anche il pubblico presente sembra dalla loro parte, cercano una sostituta, ed all'autoritaria matrona non rimane che andarsene tirandosi dietro la figlia ed il remissivo marito;

"Grace": Kernan scivola ubriaco e, nel cadere, si mozza la lingua; per sollevare la moglie, gli amici si mettono d'accordo e lo convincono a partecipare con loro ad un ritiro; molte chiacchiere;

"2." La vita collegiale è movimentata da alcuni episodi: una rappresentazione teatrale, l'amore platonico per una ragazza, le zuffe verbali e corporali con Vincent Heron e gli altri compagni che lo scherniscono per la sua segreta infatuazione, o lo stuzzicano criticando i suoi scrittori preferiti.

Suo padre, un orgoglioso irlandese ed un fedele cattolico, lo educa ai sani principi della sua gente, e lo trasferisce nel collegio dove studiò lui stesso, ma Stephen, adesso padrone della propria vita, si dà alle spese folli e, nonostante la coscienza l'accusi di peccato mortale, va a conoscere il sesso in un bordello sprecando i soldi di un premio universitario. Il padre e` sempre piu` alcoolizzato e sempre piu` indebitato.

"3." Durante il ritiro spirituale, suggestionato dalle severe prediche dei suoi insegnanti, Stephen viene colto dal terrore della perdizione; in preda ad un delirio di visioni apocalittiche, vaga per le strade finché trova la forza d'entrare in una chiesa e farsi confessare. Riconquista così la pace dell'anima, ed è ossessionato dall'idea di poter peccare di nuovo. Il peccato lo tormenta: ogni volta che si confessa deve confessare di nuovo lo stesso peccato; l'espiazione non ha fine. Lunghi deliri in un'atmosfera d'incubo descrivono i moti della coscienza di Dedalus, la sua subconscia interpretazione dei fatti della vita.

"4." Il direttore del collegio pensa invece che, sia per il carattere, sia per il profitto dei suoi studi, Stephen sia vocato alla vita sacerdotale; ma Stephen non è attratto dalla grigia esistenza dei gesuiti: vuole vivere, "ricreare" continuamente "vita dalla vita".

"5." All'università, gli studenti (fra cui Stephen, che è uno dei meno loquaci, ma anche dei più acuti, e il suo miglior amico Cranly) discutono di filosofia e politica; Stephen è ancora innamorato platonicamente della stessa ragazza che conobbe bambina, Emma, anche se è affetto da un senso di colpa per le proprie crisi di lussuria. Il suo credo si fa sempre meno ecclesiastico e più eretico, sempre meno patriottico e più universale.

1 Telemachus. At 8am of 16 June 1904, medical student Malachi "Buck" Mulligan chats with aspiring writer Stephen Dedalus on the roof of a tower by the sea. They are housemates and live in that tower. Buck is boisterous, arrogant and vulgar. Stephen, introverted, resents that (months earlier) Buck accused him of causing his own mother's death by refusing her last wish, to pray at her bedside. Stephen also resents that Buck has a guest, fellow student Haines. After eating breakfast together, the trio walk to the sea. Buck asks Stephen for money and Stephen hands him the key of the tower despite the fact that it's Stephen who pays the rent. Stephen, annoyed by Buck, is determined to move out. They make an appointment for 12:30pm at a pub.

2. Nestor. Stephen teaches ancient history to disrespectful pupils. He tells the students a riddle about a fox burying his grandmother under a bush. After class he tutors an ugly boy, Cyril Sargent, in math. Then Stephen meets with the school's pompous headmaster, Garrett Deasy, who pays his salary, gives him a lecture about England being the victim of a Jewish conspiracy, claims that women invented sin, and asks Stephen to find a way to get his own essay on a cattle disease published. During their discussion Stephen says that "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake".

3 Proteus. Stephen walks alone along the sea and his lengthy and convoluted monologue informs us that he was a penniless student in Paris when he was called back by his father because his mother was dying; that he is still haunted by his mother's death (he has vowed to wear black for a year); and that he is basically an apostate. We also learn that Buck has saved a man from drowning. He toys with the idea of paying a visit to uncle Richie (whom his father despises) and aunt Sara. His monologue wanders from Jesus' life to Irish history. Stephen urinates.

4 Calypso. At the same time (8am) that Stephen and Buck were chatting, Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged half-Jew, is making breakfast for himself and his wife, an opera soprano, and prepares to attend a funeral. They have a 15-year-old daughter, Milly, who is employed in the photography business. Bloom picks up the mail and finds a letter from Milly and a letter to Molly from her lover Blazes Boylan, her business manager. Bloom reads a magazine while defecating. He leaves the house at 8:45am, the exact same time when Stephen leaves the tower, wearing black because he's goind to the funeral of a man named Dignam, and without the house key. So both Bloom and Stephen are wearing black and don't have the key to their houses; and neither is a Catholic in a very Catholic country. However, the difference between the two is that Stephen resents his situation and plans to rebel (if nothing else, by moving out) while Bloom accepts it with resignation.

5 The Lotus-Eaters. Bloom walks around town, does some shopping, reflects on his father's suicide, and eventually heads for the post office, where, disguised as a Henry Flower, where he picks up a letter from a penpal, Martha Clifford. We learn that she is a prospective lover but he doesn't sound excited to see her. Bloom toys with the idea that Hamlet could have been a woman. Bloom has all sort of erotic thoughts (even when he stops inside a church) while at the same time upset by his wife's infidelity. Bloom imagines exotic places and meditates on the power of religious ceremonies. His wanderings include comic misunderstandings with friends.

6 Hades. On the carriage headed to the Dignam's funeral, Bloom meets Stephen's father Simon and other friends. They see Stephen walking in the street. They also pass Blazes Boylan, Molly's lover. People comment on both Bloom's father and Bloom's wife. We learn that Bloom also lost a child, Rudy, who died a few days after being born. We learn that Bloom cannot accompany Molly on her forthcoming tournee' because he has to attend the anniversary memorial for his father. Bloom thinks about death, and about his own death. His cemetery plot already exists: his mother and son are already buried there. On the way to the church Bloom crosses four rivers (like the four rivers to cross to reach the Hades in ancient Greece's mythology). At Dignam's funeral Bloom notices a stranger wearing a macintosh, who happens to be the unlucky 13th person. His meditations on death are somewhat comical, for example that it would be useful to have telephones inside coffins in case the death is buried alive or that it would be useful if the gravestones told the story of the dead.

7 Aeolus. Bloom, who works as a canvasser, walks to the office of a newspaper with the mission to place an ad on behalf of a customer, while Stephen's father Simon is chatting in another office of the same building. Bloom needs to research the design for the ad at the library. The workers of the newspaper discuss contemporary events (real ones). Stephen, who occasionally works for the newspaper, arrives at the same newspaper to offer the headmaster's letter about the cattle disease, which is accepted. Bloom, instead, does not get the deal for his client. Stephen and Bloom do not talk to each other although they see each other briefly in the office. Stephen and other workers of the newspaper leave for the pub. Stephen is treated friendly at the newspaper, while Bloom is treated by a peddler.

8 Lestrygonians. At 1pm Bloom is walking alone around Dublin. Someone hands him a flyer advertising an evangelist from the USA. Bloom sees Stephen's sister Dilly, who appears poor and starving, and Josie Breen, an old flame whose husband Denis has gone crazy, and thinks of Mina Purefoy, who is always pregnant, and relates it to the man who has just been buried: the cycle of life. We learn that Bloom placed an ad in the newspaper for a "smart typist" but with the intention to find a lover, and Martha is only one of the 44 women who responded. Bloom thinks of astronomical concepts: the parallax and the eclipse. He helps a blind boy cross the street. He walks into a pub to eat, where he remembers nostalgically when he met Molly and they fell in love. People who know him gossip about his career and his habits. Blood heads for the library to look up the design for the Keyes ad, but then he sees Boylan, he hides to avoid him.

9 Scylla and Charybdis. At 2pm Stephen and other intellectuals debate Stephen's theory of Shakespeare at the National Library: Stephen argues that Shakespeare saw himself in the ghost of Hamlet's father, Hamlet corresponded to Shakespeare's dead son Hamnet, and Gertrude corresponded to Shakespeare's adulterous wife Ann Hathaway. Stephen speculates that Shakespeare himself played ghost Hamlet on stage and that the "son [is] consubstantial with the father", i.e. that Shakespeare was both Hamlet and the ghost of Hamlet's father. Stephen further speculates that Shakespear hated his two brothers Richard and Edmund. The others, however, don't pay much attention to Stephen, so much so that he is ignored when they discuss a forthcoming anthology of Irish poets, and he is not invited at a meeting with a famous novelist at which Buck and Haines are invited. When asked if he believes in his own theory, Stephen himself admits he doesn't. It sounds like he was just trying (in vain) to impress the other intellectuals of his acumen. Meanwhile, Buck has arrived, upset at Stephen for not showing up at the pub (Stephen sent him a telegram instead). Buck intrudes in the conversation and makes fun of Stephen and much more. Buck, noticing Bloom in a nearby room, tells Stephen that he saw Bloom staring at a Greek statue in the museum, implying that Bloom might be a pederast. Buck even recites a hymn to masturbation titled "Everyman His own Wife." Bloom exits the National Library at the same time that Stephen and Buck are stepping out and passes in between them, and Buck again makes fun of his presumed homosexuality. This chapter parallels the Odyssey's chapter on the six-headed Scylla, a monster that attacks Ulysses' crew: here Scylla is six intellectuals having a boring discussion on Shakespeare, juxtaposed to the simpleton Ulysses/Bloom. At the same time Bloom seems to fit Stephen's view of Shakespeare: an unfaithful wife and a dead son.

Chapter 10 ("Wandering Rocks") is devoted to 19 brief vignettes of ordinary Dubliners: a priest who is trying to find a Jesuit school for Patrick, the son of the man who died, Stephen's sisters Katey, Boody and Maggy Dedalus who discuss their poverty, Blazes Boylan who buys a basket of food, music maestro Almidano Artifoni who wants Stephen to become a professional singer, some people who gossip about Bloom and Molly, Stephen's other sister Dilly who asks her father for money and then meets Stephen, Buck and Haines who chat about Stephen in a coffeeshop (Haines thinks he's deranged and Buck thinks he's not talented), the blind man whom Bloom helped cross the street, pretty girl Gerty who is running an errand for her sick father, etc. What stands out is the poverty of Stephen's family after his mother has died. Both the men (father Simon, a notorious drunk, and brother Stephen, a penniless writer) don't provide for the girls. Stephen has just been paid at the newspaper but does not offer his money to them. One of his sisters calls their father "our father who art not in heaven".

The first 60 lines of chapter 11 ("Sirens"), the most "musical" section of the novel, compose a cacophony of events and interpolations. Notably we learn that Bloom has purchase an erotic novel titled "The Sweets of Sin" for his adulterous wife Molly. Bloom follows Blazes Boylan who is preparing for his appointment with Molly (set for 4:30pm). Bloom follows him discreetly to a hotel where Bloom meets a friend, Stephen's uncle Richie Goulding, and accepts to have lunch. While they are eating, Stephen's father Simon starts singing. Bloom is aware that Stephen's father and Stephen's uncle are not on talking terms anymore. Bloom pities him for wasting his singing talent in alcohol. Others starts singing both love and patriotic songs (corresponding to the "sirens" of the "Odyssey"). Bloom starts writing a reply to Martha and then leaves for a 5pm appointment. Meanwhile, Boylan arrives at Bloom's house to meet Molly.

12 Cyclops. At 5pm Bloom, aware that his wife is having sex with another man at that very time, enters a pub to meet with his associate Martin to take care of Dignam's life insurance policy on behalf of the Dignam widow. The rowdy and vulgar crowd of the pub includes a debt collector (who narrates the episode) and "The Citizen", an Irish nationalist who hates the English but also the Jews. Insulted, Bloom for the first time gets angry and reminds the Citizen that Jesus was a Jew. This episode is littered with passages that seem to parody the Bible, Irish mythology and contemporary events (sports, elections).

13 Nausicaa. At 8pm, after meeting the widow, Bloom walks by the sea in the same place where Stephen walked at the beginning of the novel. He sees three girls taking care of toddlers: Cissy, Edy and Gerty (a girl we briefly saw running an errand for her sick father). Bloom is attracted to Gerty (Joyce's version of Homer's Nausicaa), who is daydreaming about marriage in the style of women's magazines and sentimental romances (the first female stream of consciousness in the novel). She hopes to marry an older man. We also learn that her alcoholic father (yet another drunkard) ruined her chances of marrying a fine gentleman and that Dignam, a friend of her father, also died because of alcohol. Gerty notices Bloom. Cissy asks Bloom what time it is but Bloom's watch has stopped at 4:30pm (probably the time when Molly met her lover). Gerty's menstrual cycle begins. She wonders if Bloom is married. Gerty shows him her legs. Bloom masturbates. Bloom thinks that Gerty saw him masturbate (which is probably true). The Gerty episode happens while in a church (named St. Mary's Star of the Sea) a priest is blessing the worshippers of Virgin Mary, leaving the impression that Joyce is linking Gerty to the Virgin Mary (something that must have been perceived as sacrilege in 1920s Ireland). The girls leave and Bloom realizes that the beautiful Gerty is a cripple: walks slowly away with a lim. Bloom draws the letters "I AM A" on the sand with a stick (perhaps paraphrasing what Yahweh says in the Old Testament, "I am who I am") and thinks about his wife Molly (wondering whether her lover pays for sex) and his daughter Milly (not much younger than Gerty) before deciding to visit Mina Purefoy who is pregnant at the hospital.

Chapter 14 (Oxen of the Sun) is a virtuoso linguistic tour de force. The chapter is both an allegory and a parody of the embryonic development, birth and evolution of the English language. It is a double-tracked allegory: on one hand the chapter is ostensibly about a woman who struggles to give birth to her 12th baby, and on the other hand the chapter is written in more than 30 styles that chronologically imitate and recapitulate famous styles of English literature all the way to the 19th century. There are no major inner monologues in this chapter as if Joyce implied that the next English style is his own, the stream of consciousness. The chapter opens with a chaotic set of sentences written like prehistoric pagan incantations. This segues into Latinate prose and then Anglo-Saxon alliteration, Daniel DeFoe's style and Lawrence Sterne's style. At 10pm Bloom, depicted as something between a medieval knight and the wandering Jew, enters the hospital where Mina has been in labor for three days. After a brief parody of the morality play "Everyman", Bloom finds a group of young men (mostly medical students) discussing with a very drunk Stephen. They are waiting for Buck (who is at the gathering of poets to which Stephen was not invited). Bloom listens to Stephen who argues (in Elizabethan prose) that the artist is also giving birth like a mother, and then argues that the Virgin Mary was the mother of her own father (if Jesus is God). Bloom thinks of his wife Molly and their baby Rudy, and then he worries about Stephen: Stephen is depressed and Bloom consoles him like a father. In his drunk stupor Stephen fears that the thunder is God's ire against him. Meanwhile the style has parodied also John Milton. "The Parable of the Bulls" (an allegorical history of Ireland as the battlefield between the Catholic Church and the English Monarchy resulting in the Irish diaspora) is written in the satirical style of Jonathan Swift. Meanwhile the style parodies Buck and his afriend Alec arrive. Buck captures everybody's attention with a dirty sexist joke. Alec, unaware of who Bloom is, boasts about his new conquest: Milly (Bloom's daughter). Mina finally gives birth to her 12th child. The prose mocks Edward Gibbon and then the gothic novel. Bloom thinks of his youth (first in the style of Charles Lamb and then in the style of Thomas DeQuincey) and we learn that he lost his virginity with a whore. The life of Mina Purefoy is told in the style of Charles Dickens. Bloom also remembers Stephen as a five-year-old boy, 17 years earlier and it sounds like he is comparing him to his own lost son, Rudy. Then we read imitations of Thomas Macaulay, Thomas Huxley, John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. The chapter ends in a chaotic cacophonous section of modern (and perhaps drunken) slang as Stephen and the other young men walk into a pub and are kicked out at 11pm. Alec finally realizes who Bloom is and slips away. Stephen and a friend hea"d for a brothel (Stephen is still determined not to sleep at the tower) while Buck and Haines return to the tower. The mysterious man in the macintosh reappears briefly.

Chapter 15 ("Circe") is the longest chapter (150 pages out of 730), it is written as a theatrical script, including stage instructions, and it features all the characters so far introduced in the novel, a sort of remix of the first 14 chapters. It also contains several hallucinations which in theory reveal hidden secrets of the subconscious, except that Stephen's hallucinations involve events of Bloom's day that Stephen cannot possibly know about and viceversa. Stephen and his friend are heading to the brothel and Bloom tries to follow them but loses them. Gerty's friend Cissy is walking towards the brothel in the company of two English soldiers. Both of Bloom's parents appear to Bloom. Then a pregnant Molly on a camel singing lines from Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni", the prostitute who took his virginity, the married Josie who flirts with him, the unmarried Gerty who doesn't, and his penpal Martha who takes him to trial. At the trial Bloom is accused of being a cuckold, a bigamist and a revolutionary. His main accuser is his former housekeeper, who accuses him of sexual assault, while his main defense witness is the dead Dignam from the underworld. Bloom's hallucination ends and he runs into Zoe, one of the prostitutes of the brothel (whose last name is the same as Bloom's mother's maiden name). Zoe asks him if he is Stephen's father. Another hallucination begins in which Bloom becomes not only mayor of Dublin but even king Leopold I, married to a princess. The man in the brown macintosh from Dignam's funeral appears and claims that Bloom's real name is Higgins. The country divides in followers and haters of Bloom. Bloom's popularity dissipates when he is revealed libertine and a pervert, thanks especially to Buck's testimony. Buck testifies that Bloom is a woman, and, sure enough, Bloom gives birth to eight boys, helped by the midwife who delivered his children Milly and Rudy. He is both man and woman and even pregnant. He is hailed as messiah Emmanuel but soon is set on fire while a choir of 600 singers intones Handel's "Hallelujah". As the hallucination ends, Zoe brings Bloom into the brothel and informs him that the owner, Bella, has a son who studies at Oxford. Stephen and his friend are chatting with prostitutes Kitty and Florry. The drunk Stephen is also playing the piano. Bloom suffers another hallucination in which his grandfather Lipoti Virag discusses the three whores (Zoe, Kitty and Florry). Bloom's alter-ego Henry Flower appears and sings a song. Meanwhile the drunk Stephen imagines his musical teacher Almidano Artifoni. Bella enters, but soon becomes another hallucination in Bloom's mind: she becomes Bello, and Bloom becomes a "she". Bello engages in sadistic rites, even riding Bloom like a horse, while Bloom masochistically enjoys his female identity. In another hallucination Bloom is treated like a servant by Blazes Boylan. Bloom and Stephen both gaze in the mirror and both see the same face: Shakespeare's face. Stephen sees the rotting corpse of his mother rising from the floor to reproach him and remind him of the fire of hell. A terrified and drunk Stephen smashes a chandelier and rushes out. Bloom pays Bella for the damage and follows him. Stephen gets in a brawl with the soldiers escorting Cissy. One of the soldiers interprets Stephen's delirious speech as a threat to assassinate the English king and attacks Stephen, despite Bloom's intervention. Stephen is about to be arrested (by soldiers that existed only in Bloom's hallucinations) but is saved by the graveyard undertaker. police are about to arrest Stephen but undertaker/informant saves him While Stephen lies unconscious, Bloom has another hallucination: his son Rudy as he would be had he survived to be eleven years old and reading the Hebrew scriptures.

16 Eumaeus. It is almost 1am. Bloom helps Stephen out of the red-light district and advises him to sleep at his father Simon's house. They browse the newspaper. Bloom reads about Dignam's funeral and Stephen looks for the essay about the cattle disease. A drunken sailor, Murphy, talks about Stephen's father as if he knew him well but Bloom suspects he's an impostor. Stephen and Bloom have the first real conversation as Bloom gives him fatherly advice, but their conversation is full of lengthy, unfinished, bungled sentences. Bloom tries to engage Stephen by discussing Irish politics but Stephen is clearly not interested. Bloom shows Stephen a picture of Molly and decides to take Stephen home. Stephen sings in the street and Bloom is impressed by his vocal talent.

Capter 17 ("Ithaca") in which Bloom returns home with Stephen is structured as an itemized catechism of 309 questions and answers, an excess of mostly irrelevant, redundant details (Joyced called it "a mathematico- astronomico- physico- mechanico- geometrico- chemico sublimation of Bloom and Stephen"). During their discussion we learn that Bloom is 38 and Stephen is 22, that Bloom only has a high-school diploma whereas Stephen already has multiple university degrees, that Bloom has a scientific mind and Stephen an artistic one. They discuss philosophy and music, in particular relating to their respective cultural heritages, the Irish and the Jewish. Stephen refuses to sleep there (a refusal somehow symmetrical to Bloom's refusal to have dinner at his house 12 years earlier) and doesn't seem interested in the friendship that Bloom is extending. Stephen leaves and Bloom goes to sleep in the bed where Molly is sleeping (and probably had sex with her lover). Bloom is happy about Martha's letter, and about his encounters with Josie, and Gerty. We get a detailed list of the contents of his drawers, including financial records and memorabilia. Bloom thinks of Boylan and all the other lovers his wife has had, but his jealousy fizzles in resignation. Molly wakes up and asks him what happened. He summarizes the day but omitting and changing a lot of details (nothing about Martha, the Citizen, Gerty). We learn that they have not had sex in "10 years, 5 months and 18 days" (never after Rudy died). Frustratingly, the chapter asks a lot of silly questions but doesn't ask the important ones. One of the questions of the chapter reads: "What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not comprehend?" The answer is: "Who was M'Intosh?" Which seems to be about the mysterious man in the macintosh. This chapter ends with a large typographical dot. Note that in Homer's "Odyssey" Ulysses and Telemachus meet to kill the suitors who threaten Penelope, whereas here they part and Bloom simply accepts his fate as a cuckold.

Chapter 18 ("Penelope") is simply a lengthy stream of consciousness (with no punctuation) by Molly Bloom as she lies in bed next to her husband and revisits her life. (Joyce wrote that "Penelope has no beginning, middle or end", a prelude to "Finnegans Wake"). We are confirmed that she had sex with Boylan (three or four times, she says) and informed that she is suddenly having her menstrual period. She remembers her best friend, Hester Stanhope, and her first love (whom she masturbated) and another suitor, who left for South Africa to fight in the Boer War. Molly comes through as a woman jealous of the success of other women and aware of Bloom's infidelity (she suspects that he has been seeing a woman the whole day) but also as a wounded woman. Throughout the novel we sympathized with Bloom, viewed him as the victim, but Molly's version of the facts reveals Bloom as the voyeur and pervert that it's been hinted all along, a lazy, coward, incompetent and stingy man. (Bloom once suggested that she posed naked for a photographer in exchange for money, Bloom once borrowed her underwear, he doesn't kiss her face but her bottom, collects pornography, and more importantly, Bloom has been cheating on her for much longer than Molly started cheating on him because we learn that, contrary to what Bloom thinks, Boylan is her first lover, coming after ten years of no sex). Then Molly begins to criticize Boyland and the chapter ends with Molly remembering how she accepted Bloom's marriage proposal: "yes I said yes I will Yes." The "obscenity" contained in this monologue (including frank depictions of orgasm, penis and oral sex) were the main reason for the novel to be banned in the USA and Britain.

A quick summary of Leopold Bloom's life. Bloom's father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who converted to Protestantism and changed his name to Rudolph Bloom. Bloom's father was Ellen Higgins, an Irish Protestant. Bloom was born in 1866, a only child. His father committed suicide. Bloom converted to Catholicism to marry Marion in 1888. They had one daughter, Milly, born in 1889, and a son, Rudy who died after 11 days in 1893. Since the child's death Leopold and Molly have not had sex. Bloom may be based on Italian writer Italo Svevo who was also half Jewish.

Shem doesn't see well and fails a test when playing with some girls. Dolph (Shem's alter-ego) tutors Kev (Shaun's alter-ego) in geometry and Kev realizes that this is a Freudian reference to their mother's sex. Butt and Taff (new alter-egos of Shem and Shaun) tell the story of Buckley, who shot a Russian general (another Freudian reference, this time to their father HCE). HCE is summoned upstairs by his wife ALP while the patrons in the pub can hear the children tell the story on the radio. When HCE reenters the pub, he is insulted by the patrons and he confesses that he is indeed a pedophile. The police close the pub, the patrons leave, and HCE gets drunk alone. He falls asleep and dreams of being a mythological Irish king. He dreams four men whose names are those of the four Christian Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) who are spying two young lovers of the Middle Ages (Tristan and Iseult).

Part III. Shaun the postman is on his way to deliver ALP's letter to the court. On the way he ends up floating in a barrel down the river and some unnamed people ask him 14 questions about the letter. The answer to one of the questions becomes the story of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, an allegorical representation of the relationship between Shaun and Shem. Shaun's new alter-ego Jaunty Juan is turning into a baby while he lectures to his sister Issy's 28 classmates at school. Mr and Mrs Porter, alter-egos of HCE and ALP, who have three children named Jerry, Kevin, and Isobel (alter egos of Shaun, Shem and Issy), are having sex but are interrupted when one of the children screams.