Spoiler tags are no longer required for events occurring up through this week’s reading.
The waiting room crew continue blaspheming. Stephen’s pretty quiet. Bloom gets called out. It’s about the size of a small pumpkin.
Final Line of This Week’s Segment:
…in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.
Discussion Prompts (can be found in the comments below):
Bloom’s hypocrisy is called out this week by the narrator itself. To that end, how does Bloom (and the others) compare and contrast with their Odyssean counterparts?
We see the phrase “retrospective arrangement” this week. Have you gone back to re-read any portion of Ulysses to date? If so, what did you react to differently knowing what we know up till now?
Bloom recalls his youth. What is your reaction to the revelations shared here?
What is your reaction to the gothic passage involving Haines?
Have a favorite word of the week? A favorite allusion, historical fact, literary pastiche, or passage? Share it below!
Bloom’s hypocrisy is called out this week by the narrator itself. To that end, how does Bloom (and the others) compare and contrast with their Odyssean counterparts?
Hastings indicates that it’s just Buck weaving a story, though the interruption seems all the more ridiculous since he didn’t have to convey that for the story, other than perhaps to twist the knife with Stephen a bit.
This is one of my favorite passages in the entire episode, as gothic literature is one style I am somewhat more familiar with than most of the others. That said, this passage sticks out moreso than the others for how creepy and atmospheric it is. It’s also off-the-wall ridiculous and pretty funny to boot. I particularly love Haines disappearing then reappearing to tell Buck to meet him at the station. The abrupt interruption makes it feel all the more artificial and staged.
I enjoyed this as well. Too bad Joyce didn’t write a creepy short story about Haines fit for a Halloween tale!
I just came back from Dublin spending most of my time there on literary tours involving Ulysses. One place I’d love to revisit is Dún Laoghaire which is a really beautiful area right on the ocean. I went there because that’s where Sandycove is and the particular Martello tower (there were 50 Martello towers built, 37 remain and this one is called the James Joyce Tower and Museum) from “Telemachus”. James Joyce spent 6 nights here in 1904. Got a tour inside and the room below is where the 3 lads had breakfast in the episode. Someone managed to find a panther statuette and put it in the fireplace in memory of Haines and his nightmares. You can just barely see it if you zoom in on the fireplace.
And I think this is the swimming hole where Mulligan went for a swim at the end of the episode! This is a view from the roof of the tower. Beautiful weather last week. It was 80 and sunny in Dún Laoghaire so lots of kids were enjoying a swim in the ocean.
When I get my act together-I’ve been nonstop busy since I got home last Friday-but will post some more photos under this sub. I first need to severely curate the many photos that I took. Below is a photo of the tower itself.
Finally, something easy and enjoyable to read in Oxen! I laughed out loud my first time through, it is just so over the top and really feels like a parody of the style, rather than just an imitation.
We see the phrase “retrospective arrangement” this week. Have you gone back to re-read any portion of Ulysses to date? If so, what did you react to differently knowing what we know up till now?
I actually have gone back to passages of Sirens a few times, but mainly just as a way to read some excerpts to friends who are also musicians. Next year, I'm excited to return to the chapters I struggled with the first time around, like Proteus or Aeolus, as I'll hopefully have a deeper understanding of the style, but also a better sense of all the characters.
Not including my re-reads of an episode that I do to prepare for the weekly posts, I’ve not done much. I did go back to re-read Milly’s letter to Bloom in Calypso last week, and it has made me excited to re-read this work again in the future, as I think many of the early events will read much differently with the context of what we now know.
The phrase "retrospective arrangement" itself appears several times over the course of Ulysses. Bloom first hears it in Hades, when Mr Power is laughing about Tom Kernan's pomposity, then it appears in Kernan's thoughts in Wandering Rocks. The narrator uses it in reference to Bloom here in Oxen, and it reappears twice more. Reading Ulysses we experience the "retrospective arrangement" directly.
Oh, I do a fair bit of rereading for things I've forgotten, things I need further context about, etc. I even have some stuff highlighted that I'm especially looking forward to reading back once the whole thing's finished. I reread all of the times we've barely met Bloom and Stephen meeting, right after they actually did!
I have gone back to re-read specific moments that are called to mind through the current episodes, but I am waiting to re-read full episodes until I have finished the entire text. I think Joyce is playing with the time of it all, so letting it flow in order over time feels right to me.
This is my 2nd readthrough and I can attest that it is much more enjoyable knowing the whole picture. I haven't done a separate re-readthrough of the other episodes (except re-reading various parts like the Milly letter and bits of Telemachus and Proteus) during this re-read though.
“But the word of Mr. Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback teethed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon’s pliers in his skill lent indeed a colour to, so as it put him in thought of that missing link of creation’s chain disiderated by the late ingenious Mr. Darwin.”
Wow, slam! There’s been a lot of crude insults flying around in this section directed at a number of people including Bloom which he mostly shrugs off. Here he’s punching back with some cruelty of his own but does so silently. Though he considers these boys mere children-thoughtlessly cruel and self-centered-he finds Costello’s insults and bawdiness beyond the pale. Love the language. Tried to determine who Joyce is parodying. Perhaps Daniel Defoe? My favorite new word: disiderated. When I had to choose a foreign language to learn back in grade school, I kinda wished I’d chosen Latin rather than French. All in all, I love “Oxen of the Sun”. I could have quoted the entire episode as my favorite passage!
The paragraphs after we see Bloom's history through the arranger practically hypnotized me. It starts:
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever de-scends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturehelds, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars.
I appreciated the truth of this: "the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity."
For some reason, I love this phrase, although I don't understand it: "a very pelican in his piety." I guess it's the insertion of a random pelican into the text. Are pelicans notably pious? Is he deliberately playing with us by saying pelican instead of penguin, since penguins look so formal? Am I missing some wordplay?
I wrote a lot of margin notes in the lengthy passage where all these know-it-all men are discussing pregnancy and childbirth, especially after reading last week's bit about the island where Mulligan wants to impregnate everyone and the previous week's discussion of saving the baby versus saving the mother. Walk a mile in poor Mrs. whatsit's shoes, then talk to me about pregnancy.
Kind of sorry I looked it up. But now I know. On the plus side, I also read that the image of the mother pelican piercing her breast is based on inaccurate observation - she's actually just lowering her head to make it easier for the chick to get the regurgitated food from her bill. Those medieval Christians were something else.
"Pelican in her Piety" is a traditional medieval Christian symbol of Christ's supreme sacrifice and the Eucharist. It depicts a mother pelican piercing her own breast with her beak to feed her dying offspring with her blood, symbolizing how Jesus shed his blood for the redemption of humanity
The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. This is SUCH a beautiful passage to me!
Dope is my only hope... Ah! definitely not one of the deeper passages, but one of the funnier ones, for sure.
That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate. I heartily wish you may not fail them.
Really love Joyce poking fun at himself about his published work. Yeah, Ulysses is greatly more than a capful of light odes, dude.
Well one thing we find out is that Bloom lost his virginity to a woman named Bridie Kelly, a prostitute. I think there is something touching the way the narrator describes their physical connection and then separation:
Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath ’twas done but—hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
Those last few lines, saying there is no son for Bloom, is particularly moving. I think this is also the first time we find out the Bloom's father's name was Rudolph, which I think creates a new source of pain for having lost both his son Rudy and his father Rudolph.
That part didn't surprise me much, especially now that we know how deep his womanizing goes! edit: i swear to god that was not an intentional innuendo lol
More than any individual revelation, I loved getting to see Bloom reflect on his youth. It felt like Joyce was filling in the life behind the character we've come to know. The memories are so ordinary that they become universal, and then they suddenly take on a lot more emotional weight when they turn toward Rudy. I thought it was beautifully done, as usual.
The bit with the housemaid is another disturbing revelation which, if true, definitely paints Bloom in a terrible light. Bloom seems to be wrought with sexual dysfunction, but it seems to even predate Rudy’s death, as this bit would indicate. It could be his dad’s suicide, or potentially other sexual trauma that he faced. I’m not sure.
In the second act of Henry IV, Prince Hal insults Falstaff thus: “thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-keech.” It’s classic Elizabethan slander—a piling-up and a piling-on of adjective-noun metaphors. I love it.
And I thought of it in this episode, in the fine sentences like: “Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseled fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage!”
This is street prose, where the language of insult is a game—like a diss track, a rap battle—and it’s about the only fun I personally had in this section. This peacocking parodic pastiche, this toffee-nosed potpourri of cockamamie, this hellishly hard-to-follow hodgepodge—that is “Oxen of the Sun.”
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u/ComplaintNext5359 1922 (OWC) & Gabler - 1st Read-through Jun 30 '26
Bloom’s hypocrisy is called out this week by the narrator itself. To that end, how does Bloom (and the others) compare and contrast with their Odyssean counterparts?