Episode XII
Cyclops
I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P.
5:00 PM, Barney Kiernan's pub. Style: Gigantism / parody.
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Summary
An unnamed cynic narrates Bloom's run-in with a violent nationalist known as the Citizen, interrupted by grand parodies. It ends with a thrown biscuit tin.
- 1
The narrator
An unnamed Dublin debt-collector narrates the whole chapter in cynical pub-talk. Every few pages his telling is interrupted by a 'gigantic' parody in another voice — legalese, mock-saga, news report, parliamentary debate.
- 2
At Barney Kiernan's
The narrator joins Joe Hynes and others at Barney Kiernan's pub, where the Citizen — a one-eyed, beery nationalist with a mangy dog called Garryowen — is holding court.
- 3
Bloom waits for Cunningham
Bloom turns up, sober and out of place, to meet Martin Cunningham about money for Dignam's widow. The Citizen takes against him immediately as a foreigner and a Jew.
- 4
The argument
Bloom is drawn into a debate about nation and force; he answers, mildly and devastatingly, that what he calls love is the opposite of hatred — and reminds the room that Christ was a Jew like himself.
- 5
The biscuit-tin Ascension
Cunningham bundles Bloom into a carriage as the Citizen rushes out swearing and hurls a Jacob's biscuit tin after them. In the parody voice, Bloom is then carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire.
Gabler lines 12.1–1918
How Cyclops unfolds, scene by scene
This is a map, not a recap. Cyclops is told by an unnamed Dublin debt-collector in Barney Kiernan's pub, with his sour narration constantly interrupted by enormous parodies. The map follows the drinking, the nationalist provocation, and Bloom's one public statement of what he believes.
The nameless narrator arrives at the pub with Joe Hynes, meets the Citizen and his dog, and the drinking and grumbling begin.
1. The narrator's voice
lines 1–60An unnamed collector of bad debts opens with a near-miss from a sweep's brush and a grievance about a swindled Jew.
Why it matters:The episode's eye is one-eyed from the first page: everything is filtered through malice.
Notice:We never learn his name. Homer's Cyclops asks for one too, and is told “Noman.”
2. The Citizen and Garryowen
lines 118–250The Citizen sits in the corner with his mangy dog, quoting grievances and spitting, and the first giant parody blows the scene up into epic catalogue.
Why it matters:The technique is established: every inflated style is punctured by the narrator's next sentence.
3. Bloom arrives and does not drink
lines 250–500Bloom comes looking for Martin Cunningham about the Dignam insurance, refuses a proper drink, and paces while he waits.
Why it matters:Everything the room will hold against him — abstinence, caution, foreignness — is on show within a page.
4. Hanging, boxing, and Irish sport
5. The Citizen on empire
6. “A nation is the same people living in the same place.”
7. “Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred.”
8. The Throwaway rumour
9. Elijah ascends
The shape underneath
Cyclops runs gossip → provocation → declaration → assault → apotheosis, alternating a narrow, bitter first-person voice with thirty-odd gigantic parodies. Both scales are distortions; the truth sits in the plain sentences Bloom speaks between them. See the Homeric parallel below for the one-eyed giant behind the Citizen.
In modern prose
Five in the afternoon, in Barney Kiernan's pub, and for the first time the book is narrated by an actual character: an unnamed, sour, sponging Dublin drinker who tells us the story in pub-talk — cheap, vivid, mean. The dominant presence in the bar is the Citizen, a violent Irish nationalist with a mangy dog, holding forth on Ireland's historical wrongs and getting drunker and angrier. Bloom comes in looking for someone, refuses a drink, tries to be reasonable, and quietly tries to argue that a nation is just the people who happen to live in a place, that love is the opposite of hate, that he himself is as Irish as anyone in the room. The Citizen turns on him as a Jew, a foreigner, a sponger, a stranger; the mood swings from rough banter into real menace. Bloom leaves; the Citizen hurls an empty biscuit tin after the cab as it pulls away. The genius of the chapter is that the realistic, ugly pub scene keeps being interrupted by huge, mock-heroic parodies — legal documents, saints' lives, sports reports, parliamentary minutes — that inflate every petty moment into epic. It's the book's most direct portrait of nationalism turning toxic: the way a wounded country can produce a man who confuses cruelty with patriotism. Today it reads uncomfortably current.
Context and parallels
The Linati and Gilbert schemas
- Scene
- The Tavern
- Hour
- 5:00 PM
- Organ
- Muscle
- Art
- Politics
- Colour
- —
- Symbol
- Fenian
- Technic
- Gigantism
- Correspondence
- Cyclops
Themes: Nationalism, Identity, Exile.
Project Gutenberg, public domain.
Further reading
Guides, essays and Daily Companion days that go further into Cyclops.
- Beginner's guide to UlyssesWhere to start, and how to keep going.
- How to read UlyssesPractical ways through the book's hardest stretches.
- All 18 episode summariesSee where this episode sits in the whole day.
- Daily Companion, Day 89: An unnamed narrator holds forth in Barney Kiernan's pubA new, unnamed narrator — a debt collector with a grudge against everyone — takes over the telling, launching straight into gossip and complaint as he heads into Barney Kiernan's pub.
- Daily Companion, Day 95: Bloom tries to define a nationPressed by the Citizen and others, Bloom tries to explain plainly what a nation is: the same people living in the same place.
- Daily Companion, Day 100: The mock-ascension closes the episodeThe chapter ends with one last wild parody: as Bloom drives off, the narrative suddenly describes him rising bodily into the sky like a saint in glory, dazzling with light, greeted by angels.
- Who's who in UlyssesLeopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and the cast of Dublin.
- Themes in UlyssesThe ideas that run beneath every episode.
- Dublin locations in UlyssesWhere Barney Kiernan's pub sits on Bloom's day.