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Episode 7: Aeolus
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ulysses, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Alienation and the Quest for Belonging
Literature, Meaning, and Perspective
Love and Sex
Fate vs. Free Will
Religion, Atheism, and Philosophy
Irish Identity and Nationalism
Summary
Analysis
Leopold Bloom passes a candy shop, and then a YMCA man gives him a pamphlet announcing that “Elijah is coming”—the evangelist John Alexander Dowie is coming to Dublin. Bloom thinks these new churches are a scheme to make money—he remembers how one company sold glowing crucifixes, which reminds him of the color of a can of codfish he opened one night in Spain. He notices Stephen Dedalus’s sister outside an auction house and assumes that the family is selling its furniture. Bloom wonders how the fifteen children are surviving without their mother, and he laments how well-heeled Catholic priests irresponsibly encourage women to have large families. He notes that Stephen’s sister is wearing old clothes and looks malnourished.
In the Odyssey, the Lestrygonians are a tribe of cannibals who attack Odysseus and his crew. This is the basis for this episode’s frequent references to food, starting with the reference to codfish in this scene. The YMCA man’s pamphlet clearly predicts the second coming, a motif that gets attached to both Bloom and Stephen at the end of the novel. Bloom is justifiably suspicious of John Alexander Dowie, as he’s seen too many convenient marriages between the religious traditions of the past and the profit motive of late 19th and early 20th century consumer society. He also gives the reader important context about the Dedalus family’s socioeconomic situation—which certainly helps explain Stephen’s resentment towards his father and general feeling of social alienation.
Themes
While crossing a bridge, Bloom notices a barge carrying beer for export to England, and he remembers how rats frequently fall into the brewery vats. He watches hungry seagulls flying over the river and remembers the story of Reuben J’s son, who fell inside. He throws the religious pamphlet down into the water, thinking the gulls might mistake it for food, but they don’t. Bloom buys two cakes from an apple stall and tosses them to the gulls, who devour them immediately. He reflects on their diet of fish and wonders what swan tastes like.
This passage recalls the beginning of “Calypso,” as Bloom returns to two of his favorite topics: food and animals. He again displays his kindness towards animals by tossing the gulls some cake, but he flips this kindness on its head when he starts to imagine eating swans. This contradiction—the fact that Bloom both adores and savagely devours animals—illuminates the way that base, animalistic urges are really the foundation of “civilized” society. When the gulls don’t take the bait and eat the pamphlet, this suggests that they are smarter than people, who fall for false prophets like Dowie.
Themes
Bloom notices an ad for trousers plastered on a boat in the river, and he’s impressed by the clever strategy. He remembers how quack doctors advertised STI treatments in public urinals. Mysteriously, Bloom asks himself, “If he…?,” but concludes, “No, no.” He passes a public clock, remembers reading about astronomy, and reflects on the concept of “parallax,” which he never fully understood. He remembers Molly asking about “met him pike hoses” (metempsychosis) and remarking, “O rocks!”
Unsurprisingly, ads are one of the first things to catch Bloom’s eye: he’s constantly looking for ways to improve his business. By mysteriously asking “If he…?,” Bloom seems to be considering the possibility that Blazes Boylan will have a STI. The concept of “parallax” is incredibly important in this novel: it refers to the way that two different observers see the same object as located in different places. This is a metaphor for Joyce’s approach to narration in Ulysses: he gives different perspectives on the same thing in order to build a richer composite picture. Bloom also returns to another key concept, metempsychosis (a difficult word which Molly sounded out as “met him pike hoses”). Although the technical explanation is extremely complicated, both parallax and metempsychosis offer answers to the question of how things can change over time. In turn, this hints at the fundamental question that haunts Bloom throughout the novel: how can he overcome his sterile relationship with Molly and create a bloodline?
Themes
Bloom sees five men wearing boards and hats to advertise Hely’s stationery company, where he used to work. He remarks that this is an inefficient and ineffective way to advertise—his own proposals were better, but Hely was too stubborn to consider them. Plus, Bloom hated his job collecting payments from nuns for Hely. But he was happier then, since he’d just married Molly and had Milly. He reminisces about old acquaintances.
Bloom’s resentment at Hely’s backwards advertising techniques again indicates that other men don’t recognize or appreciate his good ideas. He also clearly acknowledges to the reader that he has fallen into a rut—especially since Rudy’s death, a few years after Milly was born. He is constantly searching for a way to reverse the course of history and return to this happier (although imperfect) past. One way is through memory, an another is by creating a better future.
Themes
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Bloom runs into Mrs. Breen, a baker and his ex-girlfriend. They exchange pleasantries, and Bloom explains that he has just come from Dignam’s funeral. He asks about Mrs. Breen’s husband, and Mrs. Breen replies that he’s busy suing someone for libel over a postcard he received that reads, “U.P.” Confused, Bloom examines Breen’s shabby clothes and aging face. He asks about another acquaintance, Mrs. Purefoy—but he accidentally says “Beaufoy” instead. Breen explains that Purefoy is in the hospital after a difficult birth. An eccentric man named Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walks by, reminding Breen of her husband Denis. She sees Denis ahead and runs off to meet him. Bloom walks on, speculating about who might have sent Denis the cryptic postcard.
Mrs. Breen (formerly Josie Powell) also represents Bloom’s nostalgia for the past. And Bloom can tell that he certainly represents a better past for her, because she has had far worse luck in her marriage than he has. While they both secretly yearn to turn back the clock and choose each other instead of their eventual spouses, they know that, tragically, they cannot. Like Cashel Farrell’s funny walk, the lunatic Denis Breen adds another quirky, humorous, but ultimately inconsequential Joycean mystery to the novel. The reader will never learn who sent the “U.P.” postcard or what it means. One possibility is that it’s toilet humor (“you pee” or “you pee up[wards]”). Another is that his time is “up” (he’s spent or run out). A third is that it’s a meaningless message planted to mess with the unstable Breen (and the reader). In contrast, Mrs. Purefoy is extremely important to the novel as a plot point and symbol (even though she never actually appears). She becomes the central focus of episode fourteen, and her name speaks to her symbolic association with purity and the Virgin Mary. Of course, it’s telling that her latest birth comes up in Bloom and Breen’s conversation: this points to the children that they could have had if they stayed together.
Themes
Bloom walks past the Irish Times office and remembers the ad he put out, “Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work.” This is how he met Martha. He reflects on the Times’s successful ad page and thinks about a series of women: Lady Mountcashel, who goes fox-hunting like a man; the elegant woman he saw get into a carriage earlier in the morning; and Miriam Dandrade, who sold him her old underwear. Bloom thinks about Mrs. Purefoy’s husband, an old Protestant who keeps a rigid schedule, and her numerous children. He imagines Purefoy’s agonizing pain during childbirth and wonders why the government doesn’t invest in medicine for them (and small pensions for children). He remembers Molly’s pregnancy and thinks about dedicated midwives and doctors.
It’s telling that Bloom met Martha based on an ad looking for help with “literary work.” This speaks to Bloom’s prudence and his aspiration to participate in sophisticated highbrow culture, but it suggests that this aspiration is really just a fantasy motivated by more animalistic desires for lowbrow goals like sex and status. It also comments on the way Joyce believes smut, newspaper ads, and cheap romantic letters can still be valuable “literary work.” Bloom’s disapproval of Purefoy’s large family is at least partially ironic, because Bloom secretly yearns to have more children. This disapproval also echoes his criticism of the Dedalus family. While the Purefoys’ clocklike, stereotypically Protestant regularity contrasts with the Dedaluses’ chaotic, typically Catholic disorganization, both families end up making the same mistakes. As always, Bloom’s political opinions are unmistakably modern: where he blames religion for Ireland’s problems, he sees modern technology (birth control and family planning) as the solution.
Themes
Pigeons fly by the Irish parliament, defecating on passersby, and a group of policemen walks past after finishing their lunch. Bloom recalls once watching a group of policemen beat up young students during a demonstration. But he notes how easily people change sides: rebellious students become loyal civil servants, some activists are really spies, and others accidentally give away their plans. He thinks about how politics is really based on people meeting in teahouses and dinner parties, persuading each other with hospitality.
By having Bloom feed the seagulls at the beginning of the episode, Joyce sets up a clear link between birds and his protagonist. Therefore, when the birds poop on the Irish parliament and police, this is a witty metaphor for Bloom’s feelings about his country’s dysfunctional government. The problem, he sees, is that even politically idealistic people don’t put the national interest before their self-interest. (Of course, Bloom himself is no exception, as the reader will learn in “Circe” when he governs Ireland in a fantasy.) His thoughts on hospitality echo the Odyssey’s emphasis on xenia (hospitality towards foreigners through ritualized gift exchanges), and especially the way the Lestrygonians betray it by eating their guests.
Themes
As Dublin mechanically goes about its business around him, Bloom starts to think about all the people who are born and die every second and all the buildings being built, bought, and sold in cities throughout the world. He realizes that “no-one is anything” and starts to feel sick. Then, Bloom suddenly passes Charles Parnell’s brother John on the street. The poet George Russell cycles past with a woman. The coincidence of seeing another famous person astonishes Bloom, who goes on to criticize literary people’s vegetarianism, poor fashion sense, and “dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic” thinking.
Bloom boomerangs from curiosity into existential angst and then back again. This is revealing about his character and his fundamental purpose in the novel. He starts to feel depressed when he considers the world’s vastness and repetitiveness, which makes his individual life seem tiny and insignificant by comparison. “No-one is anything” is a classic statement of the meaninglessness of the universe, but it depends on the idea that meaning comes from people’s identity. Thus, Bloom seeks to define his identity in order to make his life meaningful. But he also wants to create something new throughout the novel (especially because he yearns for a complete family, which means a son). He therefore gets caught in a kind of tug-of-war between these competing forces: the comforting pull of fixed, certain, identity and the exciting push towards creating something new. So does Stephen. By critiquing the Irish literary establishment, Bloom hints at the way Stephen will try to define his own identity in the following episode. But he also communicates Joyce’s dissatisfaction with other Irish poets. Moreover, when he critiques “dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic” literature, Bloom also makes a point about the way that he intends on defining his identity: through action, not thought. As the reader will learn in the next episode, Stephen is planning the opposite. That’s why this episode focuses on the body (or action) and the next episode focuses on the mind (or thought).
Themes
Bloom looks in an optician’s window and remembers that he has to fix his glasses. He looks across the street at a clock to test his lenses, and he realizes he can’t make it out; he tries covering up the sun with his finger, which leads him to think about meeting Professor Joly to ask what parallax means. He gives up, figuring that astronomy is really just about stars and planets doing the same thing over and over.
Bloom builds on his philosophical reflection about the nature of identity and change. Whereas concepts like metempsychosis and parallax indicate that identities are subjective and ever-changing, Bloom wants a more solid sense of identity to hang his hat on. His interest in astronomy, the oldest and most mathematically precise of the sciences, illustrates the rational, prudent way that he tries to understand the universe and his place in it. This correspondence between astronomy and Bloom’s search for meaning recurs throughout the book. So does the pun between the “sun” and the “son” (when Bloom covers up the sun, he’s thinking about his fate as a man without a son).
Themes
Bloom thinks about a pair of lovers walking together under the full moon, but he quickly forces himself to stop thinking about this scene. He’s distracted by the sight of Bob Doran on his once-a-year drinking bender. In the early years of his marriage, he and Molly were happier. But he admits that Molly “could never like it again after Rudy,” and he starts to think about Martha’s letter. Bloom looks around at the textile shop windows and considers buying Molly a pincushion, but decides against it.
The lovers remind Bloom of his own marital troubles, and Bob Doran’s binge drinking again shows how people can self-destruct when they get too fixated on what could have been. (Dubliners includes Bob Doran’s backstory: he drinks because of an unhappy marriage, too.) Bloom can’t manage to keep his mind off his family, and he hints that Rudy’s death also ended his sex life with Molly. This makes it all the more clear that his desire for happiness, sex, and a son are all linked. They all fundamentally depend on his relationship to Molly.
Themes
Feeling hungry for both food and “warm human plumpness,” Bloom goes to Burton’s restaurant. But at the sight of unkempt men aggressively devouring their food, he decides to go to Davy Byrne’s instead. He imagines a dystopian world in which everyone has to fight over food from a “communal kitchen,” and he starts to think that the vegetarians might have a point.
In Bloom’s mind, phrases like “warm human plumpness” almost always represent Molly. Thus, he’s turning to food in an attempt to indirectly satisfy his desire for love, sex, happiness, family, identity, and belonging. But he gets the opposite of what he’s looking for when he sees men chomping on animal parts like primitive beasts. This scene is a direct a nod to the Lestrygonians in the Odyssey and the first line of “Calypso,” which reads, “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.”
Themes
At Davy Byrne’s, Bloom thinks about fish, Plumtree’s Potted Meat, Dignam, cannibalism, Kosher laws, and animal slaughter, then he decides to order a cheese sandwich and some wine. Another patron, Nosey Flynn, asks about Molly. Bloom explains that she’s going on tour, and Flynn asks, “Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed up in it?” Bloom panics, checks the time (2 PM), and gulps down his wine before calmly responding yes. He realizes that Flynn is too stupid to be making a point about Boylan. Nosey Flynn asks Davy Byrne for tips about the Ascot Gold Cup horseraces, but Byrne says he’s not a gambler. While Bloom enjoys his simple, clean lunch, Flynn goes on about Lenehan’s tips and the money he could have won. Bloom decides not to warn him that Lenehan was wrong today.
The inhumanity of meat-eating pushes Bloom to have a vegetarian lunch. He’s temporarily relieved, but then Nosey Flynn’s question about Boylan reminds him of everything he was dreading just a few paragraphs before (meaninglessness, meat, and his decaying relationship with his wife). Nosey Flynn’s name practically announces that he’s a gossip. It’s significant that his next conversation topic is the Ascot Gold Cup race because, by this point in the novel, the race is a clear metaphor for Bloom and Boylan’s competition for Molly’s heart and bed.
Themes
No longer hungry, Bloom starts to think about “the odd things people pick up for food,” ranging from canned fish and oysters to Chinese century eggs and aristocrats’ stuffed geese. He sees two flies on the window and starts to remember the early days of his marriage, when he and Molly joyously laid together, kissing. The oak bar reminds him of women’s curves, and he starts thinking about statues of goddesses in the museum, which represent an immortal ideal of beauty (unlike people, who spend their lives “stuffing food in one hole and [letting it] out behind”).
Joyce again shows off his wide-ranging knowledge in Bloom’s rich and entertaining monologue about food. Bloom’s memory of Molly recurs in an important form at the very end of the novel, when it also represents marital bliss and fulfillment. But Bloom’s interest in the museum statues (and specifically whether they have genitals) is a mirror image of his interest in his wife. Molly is a living, breathing, changing woman—which is why she may no longer love him—while the statues are frozen and immortal. The choice between Molly and the statues is another reflection of the dilemma that Bloom has faced throughout this episode. This could be seen as the choice between change and immobility, human and inhuman, fertility and sterility, or universal and particular.
Themes
While Bloom goes out to the yard to relieve his full bladder, Davy Byrne asks Nosey Flynn who Bloom is and why he’s in mourning. Flynn says that Bloom is an ad canvasser for the Freeman and announces that he’s definitely not mourning for Molly, who is alive and well. Flynn doesn’t think Bloom can make a good living just by selling ads, so he suggests that Bloom might have help from the “ancient free and accepted order.” Flynn and Byrne agree that Bloom is prudent and disciplined: he doesn’t drink too much, he sometimes helps the less fortunate, and he never signs his name on legal documents.
While the reader has total access to Bloom’s complex interior life, this scene is a reminder that the people around Bloom have no idea what he’s thinking. In other words, Byrne and Flynn’s chat highlights the vast difference between knowing about someone through literature and meeting someone in real life. They suggest that Bloom is a member of the Freemasons, but the reader will never know for sure. Still, their suspicion that he’s party to an extensive, secret conspiracy is obviously anti-Semitic.
Themes
Paddy Leonard, Bantam Lyons, and Tom Rochford enter Davy Byrne’s and start chatting with Nosey Flynn. When Bloom walks out of the pub, Lyons tells the other men that Bloom gave him a faulty tip for the Ascot Gold Cup horserace.
In a turn of bad luck, Bloom’s chance encounter with Lyons at the end of “Lotus Eaters” comes back to bite him. Lyons is convinced that Bloom was telling him to bet on “Throwaway,” when Bloom was really saying that he was about to “throw away” his newspaper. Lyons sees that Throwaway is the long shot, so he assumes that Bloom has nefarious intentions. There is clearly a subtext of anti-Semitism underlying this interaction, and this again reveals how Bloom’s religion leaves him mistreated and excluded in Dublin society.
Themes
As Bloom walks down the street, he watches a dog choke and then eat its half-digested food, and he hums “Là ci darem.” Calculating his income, he thinks about buying Molly a silk petticoat—or, better yet, taking her on a tour of England. He passes a Protestant bookstore and thinks about how Protestants used to offer starving people food if they were willing to convert.
The dog is another joke about food and, specifically, about the fact that Bloom has only partially digested his lunch. When Bloom thinks about “Là ci darem,” Molly’s petticoats, and taking a tour with her (like Boylan is taking her to Belfast), this clearly shows that his mind is drifting back toward the subject of Molly’s infidelity. The Protestants are connected to both England (where Bloom wants to take Molly) and this theme of Molly’s betrayal, as they dress up a bribe to pretend that it’s charity.
Themes
Bloom helps a blind man cross the street and points him the way to his destination. He starts to wonder how blind people manage to navigate Dublin, and he asks himself if their other senses really are stronger. How do blind men perceive women, Bloom asks himself, if they can’t actually see them? He tries to imagine it by touching his own cheek and then his belly. He wonders if reincarnation can explain the seeming injustice that some people are simply born blind. Bloom sees Sir Frederick Falkiner, a judge, walking into the freemasons’ lodge. He imagines Falkiner punishing the guilty, like Reuben J, whom Bloom considers a real “dirty jew.” Bloom also passes a placard announcing a fundraiser for Mercer Hospital, the location of the first performance of Handel’s Messiah.
Unlike the Protestants he’s just referenced, Bloom’s acts of kindness are truly spontaneous. After generously going out of his way to help the blind man, Bloom also starts to empathize with the man and imagine his radically different perception of the world. (Stephen reached similar conclusions at the beginning of episode three, but only because of his abstract philosophical interest in the topic.) Even though he doesn’t know what “parallax” means, Bloom is using it right here, when his curiosity leads him to consider differing perspectives on the same thing. He also returns to metempsychosis when he considers reincarnation as a solution to injustice and tragic fate. This is an appealing idea for him, since it means that justice is built into the very cycle of life, without the need for a God-like judge. Of course, the novel quickly returns to Christian imagery when it juxtaposes the guilty “dirty jew” Reuben J. Dodd with a reference to Handel’s Messiah, which is about Christ.
Themes
Suddenly, Bloom sees someone in tan shoes and a straw hat. “It is,” he repeats to himself, and he turns into the museum to avoid the man. He wonders if the man saw him, and he notices his heart beating wildly. In order to look like he’s busy doing something, he starts digging around randomly in his pockets, until he finds his bar of soap.
Bloom is looking at Blazes Boylan. His extreme anxiety reflects his desire to avoid confronting the truth about Molly’s adultery. The soap serves as a kind of talisman or shield that protects Bloom, as though it could wash away the stain of infidelity. Tellingly, Bloom called Ruben J. Dodd a “dirty jew” less than a page before—this suggests that the soap is associated with Bloom’s need to feel “clean,” or socially accepted. Like his sexual interest in the museum statues, this obsession with cleanliness also clearly represents Bloom’s affinity for the sterilized, controlled, predictable routine of his life in the modern city.
Themes
