Bloomsday: A Guide to "Ulysses"

In 2022, on the cusp of the 100th anniversary of Ulysses’s publication, I reread the novel and posted detailed responses on Facebook. I’ve reproduced those reflections below. James Joyce’s warmth and sense of humor come into the foreground and Leopold Bloom emerges as a hero for me, an Odysseus for our times.

My Reading Method

In case I give the impression I'm reading Joyce's famously complex text on my own, time for a full confession (I was raised Catholic after all and Catholicism plays an important part in the novel): Before reading each section I consult Ulysses Annotated, a comically detailed commentary on Joyce's novel, by reading the synopsis of the relevant section of The Odyssey to orient myself in the action. (No doubt you can find similar readers' aids online—I lean on this reference book since it's been with me for many years!)

I then read through the section on my own, trusting my reactions, taking brief notes, looking for connections to earlier sections of the novel, observing links to texts or events I know well, and I keep moving, not letting the difficulty of some passages stop me. (Stephen's interior monologue in the third section can get very esoteric, very intricate, very obscure, but I just keep moving.)

Once I've completed the section, I then read through the detailed notes in Ulysses Annotated, take some time to sum up my discoveries and impressions, then move on. I do think Joyce helps the reader by pausing, occasionally, to locate the action in specific parts of Dublin. While Stephen walks along the strand, engaging in philosophical reflection and mulling his mother's passing, the narrative introduces actors or places to break the flow of consciousness (there's a funny bit with a dog, for instance).

Joyce also provides the reader with clues or bread crumbs to find their way through the text. Words/objects/motifs such as omphalos, the wine-dark sea, Deasy's letter about foot-and-mouth disease, "agenbite of inwit" (remorse of conscience), and more repeat and take on new meanings in the course of the story. In a sense Joyce is creating his own linguistic or symbolic universe and asking the reader to surrender to the conventions and connections unique to that world. The reader becomes a kind of detective, tracing patterns from section to section, perceiving overarching links that are often unseen by the characters.

Stephen in Full and a New Bloom

Ulysses Episodes 1-4: Began re-reading Ulysses and having more fun than in the previous four journeys through the big book. I find myself focused on the characters themselves rather than the literary pyrotechnics—young, grieving Stephen Dedalus contending with the cocky Buck Mulligan and clueless Haines in the Martello Tower that reminds of the bitter Irish past. Yes, he's Telemachus/Hamlet, and Joyce creates a dense surface with the unending puns and literary allusions, yet in the end we meet a gifted, insecure, hypersensitive son, adrift in the Dublin of June 16, 1904, unconsciously seeking a home, a family. He might just find them.

This is an intensely Irish book. I've always understood that at an abstract level, but having researched my Irish ancestors who were "ejected" from Ireland in 1848, the realities of Ireland's colonial status come through all the more vividly. That's clear from some of Stephen's most famous lines: Irish art is "the cracked lookingglass of a servant"; "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

It's even more clear in his encounters with Haines, a liberal Englishman who unconsciously condescends to Stephen, and Deasy, the Tory schoolmaster who relishes the fact the sun never sets on the British Empire. Both are openly antisemitic, linking their patronizing attitude toward the Irish to their disdain for the Jews.

Speaking of which, the turn from Stephen/Telemachus to Leopold Bloom/Ulysses in Episode 4 marks a bracing shift to the domestic world of the colorful, troubled, loving Poldy and Molly. We leave behind the brilliant but alienated consciousness of Stephen and plunge into the intimacies of an early morning in a middle-class home. In many ways Poldy is the more domestic, shopping for his morning meats, preparing a breakfast tray for his late-sleeping wife, feeding the cat and purring himself. They're intensely physical characters, deeply connected to their senses and overtly sexual. All is not well in their private Ithaca—Molly seems to be planning an afternoon tryst and Poldy is mourning his dead son, Rudy. The episode also features Bloom's morning visit to the outhouse, one of those playfully vivid scenes that shocked reviewers when the book was published in 1922. Give Joyce his due: He covered the full gamut of human experience!

Bloom Navigates Dublin’s Dangers

Ulysses Episodes 5-7: Our hero moves through Dublin on a Thursday in June. Since he's an ad canvasser (salesman) he observes the many businesses and signs that fill this provincial capital (Dublin does feel compact in geography and character).

Following Bloom's flow of thoughts is amusing, strange, and boring all at the same time. His mind makes associative leaps that lead him down blind alleys and, at times, point to revelations. His Jewishness stands out for his "friends" (this is a very male book that highlights masculine status-seeking and joke-making). They slyly reference his ethnicity, usually with snide innuendo.

In a sense Bloom is doubly alienated within the British Empire—an Irish Jew. As such he reminds us that Joyce compares the Irish to the Greeks, the artists and thinkers subservient to the imperious British/Romans. He also thinks of the Irish as the chosen people who wander in the desert seeking their homeland. When Bloom attends a funeral for Paddy Dignam (puns lurking there), he is reminded repeatedly of his father, who committed suicide, and his dead son. No wonder he wears black, creating a visual and psychological link to the mourning Stephen.

Those obnoxious "friends" mention "Madam Marion Tweedy" with lascivious delight and imply through their double entendres that Molly is known to carry on affairs (these characters compare to Homer's suitors in The Odyssey). This reader finds himself cheering for our hero in the face of these parochial jerks. Among them is one Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father, who appears shallow and unimpressive. When the young writer surfaces at the newspaper office in the "Aeolus" chapter, just missing Bloom, I'm hoping he will connect with a father figure who can appreciate his grief and his talents. Don't sell Poldy short—like Ulysses he is "skilled in all ways of contending."

P.S. Knowing Joyce's earlier books, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, can help in coming to know the surrounding characters and the Dublin setting.

The Plot Thickens

Ulysses Episodes 8-10: Low blood sugar makes for good comedy and self-revelation. Walking toward the National Library to obtain an ad Bloom battles hunger in the early afternoon. His defenses down he riffs on the sights and sounds, yielding amusing insights into the Irish Catholic culture that he partially inhabits: "It was a nun they say invented barbed wire" (with apologies to Sister Andrew, my Irish sixth-grade teacher who amazed and terrified me).

Our hero also reveals his passionate love for Molly, remembering the day he proposed amidst the rhododendrons (a moment recalled by his wife in the novel's glorious closing scene). Despite that erotic bond, the reader learns that Poldy, 38, and Molly, 33, have not completed the act of love-making during the ten years since Rudy's passing. Their daughter, Milly, 15, works for a photographer in a town west of Dublin and provides Bloom unconditional love. Bloom is himself a source of compassion as he aids a blind man and notices other characters' pain or sadness.

The shift to Stephen's perspective in Episode 9, "Scylla and Charybdis," feels like a contraction of focus and empathy. Dedalus is in full analytic mode, unfolding an arcane theory of Shakespeare's development as a writer. His wife Anne Hathaway's infidelities supposedly led him from the early love poems to the dark tragedies to the final warm romances. Too clever by half, this reader thinks, but it occurs to me that Stephen is like Hamlet maddened by grief and exhibiting the manic cleverness of the mourning depressive. He also worries the meaning of fatherhood, much on his mind as his own father's fecklessness comes into focus. Bloom appears as a ghostly presence twice, linking him to Hamlet's spiritual father.

Leaving the National Library the text takes the reader on a tour of Dublin at 3 in the afternoon in the "Wandering Rocks" episode. Joyce creates a montage of characters moving through the heart of the city. Characters bear witness to Bloom's virtues, though with that lingering sarcasm: "There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom"; "I'll say there is much kindness in the Jew" (a reference to Bloom's generous donation to Paddy Dignam's family, quoting A Merchant of Venice).

At the same time we watch Blazes Boylan's inexorable march toward his assignation with Molly. He appears more shallow, dandyish, and randy than ever, an effective foil for our hero. We see another foil, Simon Dedalus, at his worst, denying his daughter food money and allowing his younger children to all but starve. Stephen runs into his gifted sister (she's purchasing a French language primer) and feels the surge of "agenbite of inwit," the remorse of conscience, for not protecting his younger siblings.

The section closes with the sheltered ride of the British lord lieutenant of Ireland over the very ground just covered by the characters, reminding of the political realities overriding these Dublin lives.

Notes on Supplemental Sources for Ulysses

1. Richard Ellman's biography of Joyce is a helpful guide to the big novel. He takes us inside Joyce's upbringing, attitudes toward Ireland, early writing, biographical background for Ulysses, wife Nora's influence on his characterization of Molly, and more. It's been said before, but this has to be one of the very best literary biographies ever composed.

2. Ellman reveals that even Joyce fans such as Ezra Pound struggled with his literary experimentation. Pound objected, for instance, to the shift to a radical new technique in the “Sirens” episode, asking whether Joyce shouldn't help the reader out by sticking to a consistent narrative voice!

3. Joyce shared that Bloom was his preferred character since he had already figured out Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and found it a limited vessel. I sense Bloom provided the writer a perfect vehicle for articulating his wide-ranging knowledge, curiosity, and humor.

4. The “Nausicaa” section caused real problems for the novel's publication. A literary magazine in Chicago published the episode in 1920 and was convicted of breaking obscenity laws. It would not be until 1933 that Ulysses would be published in full in the United States. For more on the novel's trials, see Kevin Birmingham's excellent The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses.

5. Bloom, a 2003 film based on the novel, provides a good companion. While a bit stilted at times (I sense the filmmaker was in awe of the classic), the film helps the reader "see" the novel's settings, hear many of the most memorable lines, and get a feel for the episodic nature of the text. Stephen Rea shines as Bloom (he does have the saddest face in film) and Angeline Ball makes for a feisty, amorous Molly. A reminder that 1904 Dublin was a far dirtier city than the one that appears in the film—it was a city of horses, coal smoke, and other pollutants during Joyce's youth.

6. Which reminds that Joyce was hard on his home city and home country. He attacked the Irish nationalist in “Cyclops” out of the belief his home country didn't need a Celtic Revival or a return to ethnic roots but a connection to Europe in all its diversity and culture. For Joyce the answer was not in the Irish past but in a cosmopolitan present.

Ulysses and Telemachus Reunited

Ulysses Episodes 14 and 15: Our hero's wanderings culminate in two episodes bringing together Bloom and Stephen in trying, even chaotic circumstances. "Oxen of the Sun" is the ultimate literary bull session. Stephen slings the ribaldry of intoxicated youth with medical students at the maternity hospital. He's well in his cups and his "friends" happily allow him to pay for more drinks with his teacher's salary, collected that morning from the Tory Deasy.

But it's not a one-way exploitation: Stephen desires an audience for his mind's arcane creations and the crude but funny companions are happy to play along. Bloom joins them by chance when he checks in on Mrs. Purefoy's struggle delivering her child. Our hero makes an awkward fit, his lugubrious manner and paternal impulses at odds with the youthful frolic, but it's a clever (if a bit obvious) way to bring Ulysses and Telemachus together.

The chapter traces not only the (at last) successful birth of the Purefoy boy but the gestation and birth of the English language as Joyce parodies literary styles from Latin to Anglo Saxon to Middle English to Renaissance to eighteenth-century to various nineteenth-century models. It makes for a wild, at times tedious, at times exhilarating ride for the reader. The developmental process culminates with the hellfire and brimstone preaching of an American evangelist, a sardonic hit at a culture Joyce found wanting.

"Circe" provides a reward for the reader who has endured thus far through the twists and turns of the novel. It's a dream sequence set in Nighttown, the red light district of Dublin. Stephen, having given his friends a good time, is abandoned by all but one, Lynch, and Bloom follows to make sure this surrogate son will be all right.

Exhausted in the late hours of June 16, Bloom encounters ghosts of the past, present, and future as his unconscious unleashes his worst fears, fetishes, and longings. Told in a dramatic format of scene-setting and dialogue, the action quickly shifts from revelation to revelation, giving Joyce a chance to sum up the day's events.

We meet Bloom's grandfather, a younger Poldy and Molly, his lost son, his sado-masochistic desires, his grandiose dreams of serving as mayor of Dublin, the humiliation of cuckoldry, fears for his daughter's future, and more. Stephen, incapacitated by drink, confronts his own ghost, his dead mother, and struggles with the knowledge he betrayed her at her dying moment by refusing to pray for her soul.

The lurking analogy between his mother and Mother Ireland surges to the surface as the young writer knows he must leave his native land. When Dedalus destroys a chandelier and gets into a fight with a soldier loyal to the Crown, Bloom rescues the gifted, troubled youth. Time to sail for home.

Home at Last

Ulysses Episodes 16-18: Bloom plays the Good Samaritan by dusting off Stephen following his fight in Nighttown and guiding him toward an early-morning repast. For the first time the reader sees the leading characters alone together for an extended period of time, yet it proves a somewhat awkward beginning. The young writer is still in his cups and Bloom's weary mind seems to drift from random topic to random topic. They encounter one of Simon Dedalus's down-and-out friends and Stephen feels inclined to help him out with a bit of cash, showing his own charitable reserves.

When they stop at a cabman's shelter for coffee and a bun (both vile), they are immersed in talk of Irish independence, leading to thoughts of Charles Parnell, the leader of the Home Rule movement who was brought down by his adulterous acts (a sly suggestion of Blazes Boylan's fate?). We also meet a garrulous sailor with tall tales of life at sea. Sinbad the Sailor amuses and perplexes as he spins his yarns. His homelessness seems to inspire Poldy's thoughts of bettering the world, revealing he believes in what we now call a guaranteed minimum income and a general care for those in need. He applies his philosophy to the immediate situation by offering to take Stephen home for a more edible meal and they repair to the Blooms', completing our hero's return to his private Ithaca.

The episode that follows proves one of the most maddening of all for this reader. After the relative directness of the preceding section, the narrative proceeds as a catechism, questions followed by often elaborate, empirical, pretentious replies. Perhaps Joyce thought of it as a distinctly male way of seeing the world and so an apt counterpoint to the female soliloquy that ends the book. It is a clever means to accomplish traditional exposition (we learn Bloom has fancied himself an inventor and poet, for instance), yet it's a cold, distancing technique for showing us Ulysses and Telemachus together in a more intimate setting.

Dialogue is replaced by extended commentaries on physical appearance, how Bloom and Stephen first met, the layout of the Blooms' house, the functioning of Dublin's water system, and so much more. There are some funny bits, to be sure, including Stephen's scrawl on a soft porn novel Poldy bought for Molly that day, but I long to see the two in actual conversation, feeling each other out, discovering areas of common interest and divergence.

In the end Stephen declines an invitation to spend the rest of the night with the Blooms, but he and our hero take a leak together as a final bonding moment (Joyce clearly took it as his goal to record every possible bodily function in this epic of modern life). His guest departed, Poldy changes into a night shirt and lays his head at Molly's feet to enter sleep at last.

Penelope/Molly's interior monologue is surely the most famous episode from Ulysses and yet it surprises each time I read it. To be sure it's a lot more fun than "Ithaca" as her mind flows over memories near and far and speculates about a wide range of topics. Her dalliance with Blazes Boylan preoccupies her mind, including a graphic description of their sexual encounter that shocked even D. H. Lawrence. And yes (to use her favorite word), she anticipates with pleasure future encounters with the bounder.

Yet the most charming moments recreate her youth in Gibraltar (her father a British officer and her mother of Spanish descent), her first erotic encounters, and above all, her courtship by one Leopold Bloom. While their marriage has been fractured by Rudy's death, Molly expresses affection for the curious, eccentric, courteous, clever, and one-time romantic husband. She also reveals her worries for (and envy of) her fifteen-year-old daughter, youthful and so doubly appealing to men. The reader learns as well that Molly has gotten her period, signaling she was not impregnated by Boylan (one of Bloom's fears during the day).

And so the epic closes with some of the most famous, life-affirming lines in literature, leaving us with the image of a courting Bloom with far more spunk than Boylan: "and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." Penelope has welcomed her wandering Ulysses back to their home. Perhaps Stephen will rent a room from them as an alternative to life with obnoxious Buck Mulligan and clueless Haines (though it must be noted that Molly has her amorous eye on the young writer). A new family may yet be born.

Final Reflections

Yes, I said yes, I'm glad I spent the past two weeks immersed in Joyce's novel. Ulysses strikes me as a fantastic act of human creativity. Joyce converted his personal experiences into an encylopedic novel that showed the way for many later writers. He persisted in publishing his vast novel despite repeated efforts to ban it. He was a gleefully transgressive writer who took on many taboos and insisted we pay attention to the full range of human experience. He modeled a method of interior monologue that has now become part of every writer's tool kit.

Leopold Bloom was much more the star than in my past readings. Stephen can capture the reader since he gets the first three episodes and his thinking is often electric and original: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." As a young reader I probably wanted to be Stephen, which is amusing and puzzling at this stage of my life. Bloom emanates a kind of generous humanism, a belief in attending to others and imagining a better world. He's of course quirky and awkward and inattentive too, prone to the foibles of being human. I'll take away memories of his manic thinking processes and abiding curiosity. And yes, I'll think about his complex relationship with Molly, a woman he still loves but who engages in extramarital affairs without much effort to hide them. Did they, after all, stay together?

In the end I'm not convinced every reader should feel obligated to read Ulysses. It would be a shame to guilt folks into working their way through such a difficult book at the expense of spending time with other fantastic writers. Reading this novel can be delightful, frustrating, boring, maddening, enlightening, surprising, impenetrable. . . . I scanned rather than read word-for-word some sections, trying to glean the general sense rather than detail and nuance. If I return to Ulysses I will pick and choose episodes that spoke to me, that moved me, that made me laugh, that sang. Joyce did possess an incredible ear for the music of language and it's a delight to read those passages out loud.

Two final notes: As one Facebook respondent pointed out, I'm not Jewish and so can't speak to Joyce's treatment of his Jewish protagonist. It seemed the novelist's intent to name and dismiss antisemitic stereotypes (see Bloom's confrontation with the Citizen), yet one hundred years on perhaps Joyce unintentionally reinforced demeaning tropes. I'll learn from others about that. And late in my reading I discovered an online resource that is well-written and thorough—it's highly recommended: https://www.ulyssesguide.com/

Thanks for coming along on the return to Joyce’s Ithaca. Here's to good reading ahead. . . .