Summary
Stephen walks on the beach, contemplating the difference
between the material world as it exists and as it is registered
by his eyes. Stephen closes his eyes and lets his hearing take over—rhythms emerge.
Opening his eyes, Stephen notices two midwives, Mrs.
Florence MacCabe and another woman. Stephen imagines that one has
a miscarried fetus in her bag. He imagines an umbilical cord as
a telephone line running back through history through which he could place
a call to “Edenville.” Stephen pictures Eve’s navel-less stomach.
He considers woman’s original sin, and then his own conception.
Stephen contrasts his own conception with that of Christ. According
to the Nicene Creed, a part of the Catholic mass, Christ was “begotten,
not made,” meaning that he is part of the same essence as God the
Father and was not made by God the Father out of nothing. Stephen,
in contrast, was “made not begotten,” in that though he has biological
parents, his soul was created out of nothing and bears no relation
to his father’s. Stephen would like to argue the specifics of divine
conception (are the Father and the Son the same being or not?) with
heretic-scholars of the past.
The sea air blows upon him, and Stephen remembers that
he must take Deasy’s letter to the newspaper, then meet Buck at
The Ship pub at 12:30.
He considers turning off the beach to visit his aunt Sara. He imagines
his father’s mocking reaction to such a visit (his father is disgusted
by his brother-in-law, Richie, who is Sara’s husband). Stephen imagines
the scene if he were to visit: Richie’s son Walter would let him
in and uncle Richie, who has back trouble, would greet Stephen from
bed.
Coming out of his reverie, Stephen remembers feeling
ashamed of his family when he was a child. This disgust for his
family brings Jonathan Swift to mind—Swift’s disgust for the masses
is evidenced in his novel Gulliver’s Travels by
the noble Houyhnhnm horses and beastly Yahoo men. He thinks of Swift,
with a priestly tonsured head, climbing a pole to escape the masses.
Stephen thinks of priests all around the city and of the piety and
intellectual pretensions of his youth.
Stephen notices he has passed the turnoff for Sara’s.
Heading toward the Pigeonhouse, Stephen thinks about pigeons: specifically, the
Virgin Mary’s insistence that her pregnancy was caused by a pigeon
(as recorded in Léo Taxil’s La Vie de Jesus). He
thinks of Patrice Egan, the son of Kevin Egan, a “wild goose” (Irish
nationalist in exile) whom Stephen knew in Paris. He remembers himself
in Paris as a medical student with little money. He remembers arriving once
at the post office too late to cash a money order from his mother.
Stephen’s ambitions for his life in Paris were suddenly halted by
a telegram from his father, calling Stephen home to his mother’s
deathbed. He thinks back to Buck’s aunt’s insistence that Stephen
killed his mother by refusing to pray at her deathbed.
Stephen remembers the sights and sounds of Paris, and
of Kevin Egan’s conversations about nationalism, strange French
customs, and his Irish youth. Stephen walks to the edge of the sea
and back, scanning the horizon for the Martello tower. He again
vows not to sleep there tonight with Buck and Haines. He sits on
a rock and notices the carcass of a dog. A live dog runs across
the beach, back to two people. Stephen imagines the beach scene
when the first Danish Vikings invaded Dublin.
