Telemachus
“Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…”
What actually happens
Stephen Dedalus opens the day in a seaside tower, mocked by his roommate Buck Mulligan and unsettled by the recent death of his mother. He decides not to return that night.
- Beat 01On the roof
Buck Mulligan shaves on the gun-platform of the Martello Tower and mock-celebrates a Mass with his shaving bowl, dragging the half-mourning Stephen into the joke.
- Beat 02Mulligan and Stephen
They argue, mildly, about Stephen's refusal to kneel at his dying mother's bedside. Mulligan calls Stephen 'dogsbody' and 'jejune Jesuit'; Stephen takes the wound and files it away.
- Beat 03Breakfast with Haines
Their English guest Haines comes down. They eat, the milkwoman arrives, and Stephen watches her as a stooped, foreign emblem of an Ireland being sold cheap.
- Beat 04Down to the bay
The three walk to the Forty Foot for a swim. Mulligan dives in; Stephen, dry on the rocks, hands over the tower key and decides, silently, that he will not be coming back tonight. The chapter ends on the word 'Usurper.'
Accessible Ulysses
Modern prose · plain EnglishEight in the morning on 16 June 1904, in a stone gun-tower on the coast just south of Dublin. Stephen Dedalus is twenty-two, fresh back from a failed stab at being a writer in Paris, and still raw from his mother's death — she asked him on her deathbed to pray for her and he, having lost his faith, refused. He's now sharing the tower with Buck Mulligan, a charismatic medical student who is everything Stephen isn't (loud, confident, untroubled, popular), and Haines, a posh English visitor who collects Irish folklore the way other tourists collect souvenirs. Over breakfast Mulligan needles Stephen about his black mourning clothes, his mother, his pretentiousness; an old milkwoman comes to the door and Stephen sees in her a kind of shrunken symbol of Ireland — poor, deferential, more impressed by the Englishman and the doctor than by her own son the poet. Underneath the banter the chapter is about three kinds of occupation: the English occupy Ireland, the Church occupies Stephen's conscience, and Mulligan is quietly occupying his home. By the end Stephen hands over the key, walks off to work, and silently decides he isn't coming back. He is choosing exile inside his own city — a young man cutting himself loose from country, religion and friendship in the same morning, with nothing yet to replace them.
Going deeper
Why is this the opening of Ulysses?
Homer's Odyssey doesn't begin with its hero but with his son, Telemachus, searching for a missing father. Joyce mirrors that structure: we meet Stephen Dedalus, the searching son, before we ever meet Bloom. The opening plants the father-and-son pattern that the whole novel will quietly resolve. See how it fits the larger design in the Homeric parallels.
What should readers notice here?
Watch the imagery of usurpation — Mulligan, Haines, and the very tower all feel borrowed from Stephen. Notice the sea ("snotgreen, scrotumtightening"), which returns throughout the book, and the recurring guilt over his mother. Even in this relatively plain chapter, Stephen's interior monologue threads beneath the dialogue.
Why can Telemachus feel easier than later episodes?
The scene is concrete, the cast is small, and there's plenty of sharp, funny dialogue to hold onto. Joyce hasn't yet unleashed the stylistic experiments of the middle and later chapters, so Telemachus is an ideal place to find your footing. When you're ready for the harder turn, Proteus is the next step.
Common questions
- What happens in Telemachus, the first episode of Ulysses?
- Telemachus opens at 8 a.m. on 16 June 1904 at the Martello tower in Sandycove, where Stephen Dedalus lives with the boisterous Buck Mulligan and the Englishman Haines. Over breakfast and shaving, tension simmers between Stephen and Mulligan, and Stephen, still grieving his mother, decides he will not return to the tower that night.
- Why is Telemachus the opening of Ulysses?
- It mirrors the start of Homer's Odyssey, which begins not with Odysseus but with his son Telemachus. Joyce opens with Stephen, the searching son, before introducing Bloom — establishing the father-and-son pattern that shapes the whole novel.
- Is Telemachus easy or hard to read?
- Telemachus is one of the more approachable episodes. The scene is concrete and the dialogue is lively, though Stephen's interior monologue already runs beneath it. It's a good place to find your footing before the denser chapters.
- Who is Buck Mulligan?
- Buck Mulligan is Stephen's witty, irreverent flatmate, a medical student who mocks everything sacred. His blasphemous opening — 'Introibo ad altare Dei' — sets the book's playful, profane tone and his easy cruelty sharpens Stephen's isolation.
Schema · Linati / Gilbert
- Scene
- The Tower
- Hour
- 8:00 AM
- Organ
- —
- Art
- Theology
- Color
- White, gold
- Symbol
- Heir
- Technic
- Narrative (young)
- Correspondence
- Telemachus
Homeric parallel
Telemachus
Joyce mapped each chapter to an episode of Homer's Odyssey. This one echoes Telemachus — not as direct retelling but as structural shadow.
Key themes
Continue reading
Keep exploring Telemachus and how it connects across Joyce's Ulysses.
- Telemachus: the Homeric parallelHow Telemachus echoes Homer's Odyssey.
- Who's who in UlyssesMeet Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and the cast of Dublin.
- Themes in UlyssesThe ideas that run beneath every episode.
- Dublin locations in UlyssesSee where Martello Tower, Sandycove sits on Bloom's day.
- Daily Ulysses reading companionRead the whole novel in about six months, one step a day.
- All 18 episode summariesBrowse every chapter of Ulysses in plain English.