CHAPTER ELEVEN

Chapter 11

Lecture Thirteen -- The Sirens of the Ormond Hotel

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This chapter is named for the enchantresses in The Odyssey who

captivate passing sailors with their singing and lure them to death

on the beaches of their island. By having himself bound hand and

foot to the mast of his ship and putting wax in the ears of his men,

Ulysses manages to hear the Sirens without being lured to disaster.

In this chapter, the Sirens are a pair of sexy barmaids at the bar of

the Ormond Hotel, where Bloom takes a late afternoon meal in the

adjoining restaurant. Like Ulysses, Bloom is tempted by the

seductive power of music, in particular by songs of love and

sentimental nationalism, but he resists its enchanting power and

critically observes its narcotic effect on those around him,

including Stephen’s father, Simon, and uncle, Richie Goulding.

Toward the end of the chapter, Bloom quietly leaves the bar and

then makes-at the very end-a most remarkable comment on

Irish nationalism.

Outline

I. This is a chapter about music-a tour de force of musical effects

created in language.

A. Joyce himself called it afuga per canonem-a fugue according torule.

1. In a fugue, a basic theme or melody flies from one voice partor instalment to another. 

2. A fugue according to rule offers a subject, an answer, acoumter-subject, a climax, and a coda.

B. Elements of the fhgue permeate the chapter.

1. When Bob Cowley starts to sing an aria and then plays thepiano while Simon Dedalus sings, the aria passes or flies fromone singer to another. 

2. The comments and laughter of the barmaids fly back and forthbetween them. 

3. The chapter as a whole reveals the structure of a fugue:

a. The chatter of the barmaids is the Sirens’ song-thesubject. 

b. Bloom’s entry and monologue is the answer to theSubject. 

c. Blazes Boylan, who briefly appears at the bar beforeheading off to see Molly, is the counter-subject. 

d. The climax comes when Simon Dedalus hits the last highnote of the aria. 

e. Bloom sounds the Coda with his final fart.

C. The chapter begins with what is sometimes called an overture-a
stream of short sentences, phrases, and sometimes single words
that anticipate the full melody of incidents that follow.

1. “Jingle Bloo” anticipates the sound of Blazes Boylan’sjaunting car as Bloom sadly hears him heading off to seeMolly. 

2. “One tapped” refers to the blind stripling whom Bloom helpedback in chapter 8 and who returns in this chapter to reclaimthe tuning fork that he used to tune the piano in the bar.

D. Joyce mimics in language such distinctively musical phenomena as
the chord, the counterpoint, and the trill.

1. Just after Simon finishes singing Lionel’s aria from the operaMartha, we find the name “Siopold”--a chord made of threenames, Simon, Lionel, and Leopold. 

2. Counterpoint appears when Richie Goulding’s account ofSimon Dedalus’s singing is interwoven with lines of the song. 

3. A trill appears in a special long word used for Molly’s wavyhair.

E. Thus, the chapter seems to confirm what We know about Joyce
himself: that he loved music.

II. Paradoxically, this chapter exploits all the resources of music only to

show us-finally-how dangerous, delusive, and mind-numbing they

can be.

A. Though music can be soothing in this novel, it has up to nowchiefly signified seduction.

1. Boylan’s pretext for visiting Molly today is to discuss theprogram for her concert, which includes a duet of seductionfrom Mozart’s Don Giovanni. 

2. Bloom’s daughter, Milly, reports in a letter that a young manhas been courting her by means of a song composed bysomeone named Boylan. 

3. Thus, Bloom’s wife and daughter are each targeted forseduction by means of a piece of music tied to Blazes Boylan

B. The theme of seduction in music is reinforced by the parallels
between this chapter and the Sirens episode of The Odyssey.

1. In Homer’s epic, the Sirens lure passing sailors to disaster bymeans of their song. 

2. By having himself bound to the mast of his ship and puttingwax in the ears of his men, Ulysses manages to hear theSirens’ song without being lured to disaster. 

3. In this chapter, the Sirens reappear as a pair of sexy barmaids

a. They catch the eye of the viceroy’s aide de camp as theViceroy and his party pass by the bar. 

b. One of them--Miss Douoe--teasingly lifts her skirt andsnaps her garter to sound the hour of 4:00 as Boylanlooks on. 

c. She also trills a song about a beautiful woman living on a South Sea island.

4. The Sirens’ song about the Trojan War has its counterparthere in a song called “The Croppy Boy.”

a. In Homer, the Sirens try to lure Ulysses by singing aboutthe Trojan War-an irresistible topic for a veteran of that 

b. “The Croppy Boy” is a ballad made to make every Irishnationalist drown in pity. 

c. It tells the story of a boy caught up in the doomedrebellion of the Irish against the English in 1798. 

d. Having seen his father and all his brothers killed beforehim, the Croppy Boy-a Wexford rebel who cropped hishair-was hanged when he made his confession to a falsepriest (an English captain dressed in clerical robes)

III. Like Ulysses, Bloom contrives to hear the music without getting

captured by it.

A. Although the men in the bar are-as Bloom observes-“all lost inpity for croppy,” he alone cares about the suffering of his owncontemporaries, such as Mina Purefoy in labor and even BenDollard himself, the singer, mined by drink. 

B. Bloom recalls in several ways what Ulysses does with the Sirens. 

C. Just as Ulysses enlists the help of sailors, whose ears are stuffed
with wax, Bloom asks a deaf waiter to open the door between the
restaurant and the bar so that he can hear the music. 

D. He shares Ulysses’s determination to see and hear everything in
the course of his travels.

1. He enjoys the “glorious tone” of Simon Dedalus’s voice. 

2. He can recognize a minuet when he hears it on the piano.

E. He shares Ulysses’s determination to survive and complete the
journey-by using his mind.

1. He thinks about the music he’s hearing, as well as about thesingers and piano players generating it. 

2. In puns, such as “Tenors get Women by the score,” Bloomcool-headedly judges the seductive power of a tenor voice-and at the same time, shows that the language of this chapternever surrenders its meaning to pure sound. 

3. Bloom sees that music can lull the mind into a “kind ofdrunkenness

IV. Joyce himself never allows music to get control of the writing. Even as

he mimics the techniques of music, he reveals and deploys the power

of words.

A. When Lydia Douce snaps her garter for the delectation of Boylan,the whole scene shows the disparity between the would-be eroticeffect of music and the snap of an elastic~the cheapest imaginablethrill. 

B. The passage recalls the “Aeolus” chapter, in which the “Harp
Eolian” of a headline turns out to be nothing more than a piece of
dental floss twanged by Professor MacHugh.

V. Though Bloom feels pain when Boylan heads off to see Molly, he

withstands both this pain and the seductive power of Lionel’s aria from

Martha.

A. Because Simon sings Lionel’s aria to Martha at the very momentwhen Bloom is writing a letter to Martha Clifford, he is struck bythe coincidence. We might easily imagine that the lovesick Lionelof the opera might speak for the lonely, long-suffering Bloom. 

B. But Bloom thinks more of Molly than of Martha.

1. He finds her language ridiculous and is bored by the task ofwriting to her. 

2. The sound of a love song makes him think of the night he firstmet Molly-at a musical party. 

3. The thought of Molly is one of the ways in which Bloomresists the enchantments of music.

VI. Bloom also makes fLm of music and its effects in this chapter

A. Just after Simon hits the climactic final notes of Lionel’s aria,Bloom plucks his elastic band, making it buzz and twang. 

B. He thinks of Molly’s peeing in a chamber pot as “chamber music. 

C. By farting at end of the chapter, Bloom “pipes” his critique of the
sentimental nationalism that turned the last words of Robert
Emmet, the doomed patriot, into something like the last words of
Christ.

Supplementary Reading:

Bowen, Musical Allusions

Kenner, pp. 83-92.

Knowles, Bronze by Gold.

Questions to Consider

1. Joyce declared that the act of writing this chapter, which fully explores

and exploits the resources of music in language, destroyed his

enjoyment of music. Does the chapter itself reveal how this could have

happened?

2. How does the pity provoked by the singing of “The Croppy Boy” differ

from the sympathy that Bloom often feels for other people?

CHAPTER TEN

Chapter 10

Lecture Twelve -- Wandering Rocks

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This chapter takes its name from a place so dangerous that Ulysses

avoids it altogether on the advice of Circe: a sea passage where

seemingly “wandering” rocks make it impossible for ships to pass.

In Joyce’s Dublin, wandering rocks become characters who bump

into each other-sometimes literally-as Bloom and Stephen make

their separate ways through its labyrinthine streets. In each of its

nineteen sections, the chapter follows the movements of various

Dubliners. Ostensibly overseen by church and state, embodied

respectively in Father Conmee at the beginning and the viceroy at

the end, each character has an independent mission. Collectively,

their movements and missions make up the life of the city that

defines both Stephen and Bloom

Outline

I. Chapter 10 of Ulysses takes us into the bewildering labyrinth of Dublin

itself 

A. The chapter consists of nineteen sections. With each sectionfocused on a different aspect of Dublin life, the chapter showsmany things happening simultaneously. 

B. We seem to be looking down on the city from a great height, and
we may wonder how we can keep track of all its figures, especially
Stephen and Bloom.

II. The Homeric episode of the wandering rocks helps us to see the

chapter as a study in blind collision.

A. In Homer’s epic, the wandering rocks are so dangerous thatUlysses avoids them altogether on the advice of Circe.

1. They seem to have been a cluster of rocks looming up in themidst of roaring waves. 

2. It is impossible for a ship to pass through them.

B. Unlike Ulysses, Leopold Bloom does negotiate the wandering
rocks of Dublin, which take the form of various people bumping
into each other, obstructing each other, or passing each other
without really communicating.

1. A blind stripling is buffeted by an eccentric old man. B. In place of personal supervision, mechanical order seems to run 

2. A tall man blocks the entrance to a wine bar.

III. The city is officially supervised by the power of church and state, the

priest and the Viceroy, and the chapter is bookended by sections telling

the story of their two philanthropic journeys. But the chapter reveals

how little sway over the city they have.

A. In section l, Father Conmee travels from north central Dublin tothe O’Brien Institute to find a place there for one of the sons of thelate Paddy Dignam. 

B. In section 18, the Viceroy-the man who embodies British power
in Dublin-travels from the viceregal lodge to the southeast
outskirts of Dublin to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds
for the Mercer hospital. 

C. But the chapter shows how little they affect the people they are
supposed to be supervising-politically and spiritually.

1. We never find out whether either man completes his missionor not.

a. We don’t know whether Conmee found a place for theDignam boy. 

b. We don’t follow the Viceroy to the bazaar or learn howmuch was raised for the hospital.

2. We see no evidence that either man has any sway over thepeople he is supposed to guide and lead.

a. Conmee ignores the appeal of a crippled sailor holdingout his cap for a coin, thinks only briefly of maimedveterans generally, and thinks that the lives of a bargemanand diggers must be idyllic. 

b. The Viceroy is generally ignored, and at one point, he and his whole party are contemptuously hailed by “a tongue of liquid sewage.”

IV. With no one person dominating the chapter, we seem to be living in a

world driven by mindless machinery.

A. Just as carefully as it follows the ostensibly important journeys ofConmee and the Viceroy, so does it follow the progress of thecrumpled throwaway announcing the coming of “Elijah”-thethrowaway that Bloom threw into the River Liffey in chapter 8.the city and the chapter itself.

1. The chapter often refers to machines.

a. Conmee rides a tramcar. 

b. The dynamos of the powerhouse urge Stephen to get on. 

c. Tom Rochford invented a new gadget. 

d. Master Dignam’s collar keeps popping up.

2. The separate sections of the chapter interlock like a system ofcog wheels.

a. A line from one section suddenly appears in another. 

b. We are thus made to understand that the actions of thetwo sections are occurring at the same time.

V. ln spite of all the attention paid to other characters, Stephen and Bloom

do not get lost; we see them all the more clearly as citizens of Dublin

with their own distinctive personalities.

A. Even as Lenehan tells a funny story to show that Bloom has hishead in the clouds, he admits that Bloom is unusually cultured.

1. Spotting Bloom looking over books on a hawker’s cart,Lenehan tells about the time that he rode back from a fancydinner late one night in an open car with Molly beside himand Bloom on a different seat.

a. Bloom was explaining all the stars. 

b. Remembering that he thoroughly enjoyed his proximity to Molly and was sexually excited by it, Lenehan is greatlyamused by the memory of Bloom’s obliviousness.

2. But Lenehan sees that Bloom’s interest in the starsexemplifies his all-round cultivation. This makes Bloom standout for two reasons:

a. It’s the first time anyone in the book has spoken so highly of Bloom. 

b. Bloom’s all-roundedness takes even Lenehan by surprise: he’s an uncommon man, a man who stands out.

VI. This chapter reveals the contrast between the complexity of Bloom and

the single-mindedness of his rival, Blazes Boylan.

A. Boylan is a man about town bent on seducing Molly. When hegoes to a fancy fruit shop to buy a basket of pears and peaches, weknow exactly why he’s there. His motivation is perfectly simple. 

B. The chapter lets us see that while Boylan buys fruit for Molly,
Bloom is buying her a soil porn novel titled Sweets of Sin-a
cheap novel about a married woman and her lover. This purchase
prompts us to wonder about Bloom’s motives and his relation to
Molly.

1. Bloom knows that Molly likes soft-porn novels and ratherthan trying to reform her taste, he wants to gratify it. 

2. Knowing that he has failed to satisfy her sexually for morethan ten years, he may be trying to let her feel vicariously thethrill of adultery. 

3. In any case, Bloom is nothing like the odd man out in a typicalstory of adulterous love-nothing like the hoodwinkedhusband of the novel he buys for Molly. He’s a manstruggling with painful conflict.

a. He’s afraid of begetting yet another doomed son. 

b. He’s dismayed by the knowledge of what Boylan plans to do with Molly.

C. Meantime, Stephen is menaced by the poverty of the Dedalus
family and tempted by yet another way to make money--yet
another occupation that would sabotage his literary ambitions.

1. His sister Dilly, whom he briefly encounters at the book cart,exemplifies the poverty of the Dedalus family.

a. Offering her none of his own money, he sees her only as another drowning woman-like his mother. 

b. Unlike Bloom and his wife, who both give money to theneedy in this chapter, Simon Dedalus gives almostnothing to his family and, thus, seems to abdicate his roleas a father.

2. Stephen’s singing teacher urges him to become a professionalsinger, but Stephen knows that he could do so only bysacrificing his ambition to write.

Supplementary Reading:

Han, “Wandering Rocks,” in Han and Hayman, pp. 181-216

Kenner, pp. 61-71.

Questions to Consider

1. Why are some minor characters in this chapter--specifically Conmee

and Master Dignam--given interior monologues, which have been

hitherto reserved for two of our three chief characters, Stephen and

Bloom?

2. What does Master Dignam’s monologue tell us about him, especially about his response to the death of his father?

CHAPTER NINE, PART 2

Chapter 9, Part 2

Lecture Eleven -- Scylla and Charybdis, II

(from "Joyce's Ulysses" by Professor James A.W. Hefferman of Dartmouth College)

Scope

This second lecture on “Scylla and Charybdis” explains Stephen’

theory of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and considers what the theory

tells us about Stephen’s quest for a literary father and about

Stephen’s conception of the creative artist. Stephen hardly

convinces anyone that Hamlet expresses Shakespeare’s own fear

of an adulterous affair between his wife and one of his brothers.

He does not even believe this theory himself. What he does want

and need to believe is that Shakespeare’s art is driven by his sense

of usurpation and banishment, because it is precisely these feelings

that will fuel Stephen’s own art. In the process of finding a literary

father in Shakespeare-as-usurped-husband, Stephen unwittingly

identifies Shakespeare with both Ulysses and Leopold Bloom.

Outline

I. Seeking to unmask the playwright who stands behind Hamlet, Stephen

is also seeking a literary father; he thinks he can find that father in

Shakespeare, and that he can find Shakespeare in the ghost of Old King

Hamlet.

A. In taking the ghost as the key to the whole play, Stephen turnsaway from the title figure, the tormented son, to focus on thetormented father. 

B. Though Shakespeare was obviously alive when he wrote Hamlet,
Stephen claims that he was a “ghost by absence,” because he lived
and worked for twenty years in London, away from his home and
wife in Stratford. 

C. Stephen imagines Shakespeare himself playing the ghost in the
first production of the play.

1. Although other critics see Shakespeare as the internationalgenius of Platonic ideal and formless spiritual essences,Stephen wants to repatriate him, situate him in a particulartime and place. 

2. Playing the ghost and addressing Hamlet, Shakespeare speaksto the son of his soul (the character he created) and the son ofhis body--a boy named Hamnet who died at the age of l l. 

3. Stephen takes Hamlet as the dramatized version of whatShakespeare’s little boy might have grown up to be. 

4. And because Shakespeare is a “ghost by absence,” Stephenclaims that Shakespeare identifies himself with the murderedfather and identifies his wife-born Ann Hathaway-with theguilty queen of the play.

II. Stephen wildly stretches the facts about Shakespeare’s life and doubts

his own argument but feels “condemned” to pLu”sue it.

A. During the course of the argument, he silently interrogates himself 

B. He feels condemned to pursue the argument because he
desperately wants to know what it means to be a father and have a
son.

III. His argument leads him to a Shakespeare who looks very much like

Ulysses on the one hand and Bloom on the other.

A. Bloom, Ulysses, and Shakespeare each leaves his home and wifeand eventually returns. 

B. All three Wanderers suspect their wives of infidelity during their
absence. 

C. Special parallels emerge when We focus on Bloom and
Shakespeare.

1. Shakespeare’s son died at ll years of age; Bloom’s Rudy diedat the age of 11 days. 

2. Like Bloom, Shakespeare had (according to Stephen) not onlyan adulterous wife but also a dead father and a livingdaughter. 

3. Shakespeare addresses Hamlet as the grown up version of hisdead son Hamnet; Bloom links Stephen with the boy that littleRudy might have become.

IV. Bloom himself has already begun to play the ghost of 0ld King

Hamlet.

A. Thinking about poetry, he quotes the first words spoken by theghost to Hamlet. 

B. In quoting the words of the ghost, Bloom helps us see that he can
be linked to the ghost and through the ghost, to Shakespeare, the
literary father whom Stephen seeks.

V. Stephen seeks the life of Shakespeare in all his works.

A. According to Stephen, Shakespeare’s early poem Venus andAdonis tells in disguised form the story of how Shakespearemarried Ann Hathaway.

1. The poem tells how Venus, goddess of love, falls in love withthe handsome Adonis; when he insists on going hunting, he isfatally gored by a boar. 

2. Stephen argues that the 26-year-old Ann seduced the 18-year-old Shakespeare and, thus, unmanned him, leaving himsexually gored.

B. In spite of Shakespeare’s vigorously active sex life, he could still
be outraged by threats to the fidelity of his wife-just as Ulysses
was~and his plays reflect his suspicion of that fidelity.

1. Like Ulysses, Shakespeare dallied with other women duringhis long absence from his wife.2. Like Ulysses, he distrusted his wife.

a. He left her only his “second best bed” in his will. 

b. He used the names of his brothers (Richard and Edmund) for two of his worst villains, which suggests that he (like Old King Hamlet) suspected one or both of his brothers of seducing his wife.

C. Hence, Stephen finds in all of Shakespeare’s work the themes of
usurpation and banishment. 

D. Though Stephen doesn’t believe his own theory, the theory is an
exercise in self-revelation. Stephen goes to Shakespeare to get
permission to create his art from his own sense of banishment and
usurpation.

VI. Shakespeare shows Stephen how to negotiate the relation between

himself as artist and the outside world, how to find a way between the

Charybdis of self-absorption and the Scylla of mere facts.

A. In Shakespeare, Stephen finds an artist who fused the subjectivelife with the objective world. 

B. He found his way between subjectivity and hard facts by making his 
art q vitally humanized mirror of life. 

C. In Hamlet as Stephen construes it, Shakespeare represents the objective faces of his own family life but also projects himself as
the spiritual father of all his race-including, of course, all the
writers who would follow him.

VII. Nevertheless, Stephen makes us wonder just how far paternity can

serve as a metaphor for literary creation.

A. When Stephen says that fatherhood is a “mystical estate,” he callsto mind what Telemachus says to Athene in The Odyssey: “nobodyreally knows his own father.” 

B. Back in chapter 2, the sight of Cyril Sergent prompted Stephen to
recall his own dependence on the mother who nurtured and
protected him. 

C. Hearing Stephen claim that Shakespeare fathered all of his race,
Mulligan pretends to be having a child, which turns out to be a
play called “Everyman his own Wife”-a play that exposes the
absurdity of purely male begetting. 

D. Hence, Stephen’s theory of literary creation cannot be complete
until it makes room for the role of women.

Vlll. Finally, Stephen sees himself as the son of Dedalus.

A. Though in many ways he finds a literary father in Shakespeare, heremembers that his mythical father is Dedalus, who made wingsfor himself and his son Icarus so that they could fly and escape thelabyrinth of Crete. 

B. Icarus drowned when the sun melted the wax from his wings;
Stephen likens himself to Icarus as a “lapwing” who drowned in
futility and drink after flying off to Paris to make his name as a
writer. 

C. Nevertheless, Stephen’s memories of flying in his dream link him
also to the Celtic god Aengus of the birds, and his memory of a
man with a melon in his dream suggests Bloom as the possible
answer to Stephen’s quest for a literary father-especially because
the Shakespeare described by Stephen resembles Bloom in many
ways.

Supplementary Reading:

See the readings for Lecture Ten

Questions to Consider:

1. Why does Stephen deliberately twist the known facts of Shakespeare’s

life?

2. Why is Stephen so eager to repatriate Shakespeare, to imagine him

acting in his own play, on his native ground, in a particular time and

place and setting?