Episode I
Telemachus
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan…
8:00 AM, Martello Tower, Sandycove. Style: Young narrative.
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Summary
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.
- 1
On 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.
- 2
Mulligan 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.
- 3
Breakfast 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.
- 4
Down 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.'
Gabler lines 1.1–744
How Telemachus unfolds, scene by scene
This isn't another summary — it's a map. If the sections above tell you what happens, this shows you how the episode actually moves: from a mock religious ritual on the rooftop, to rising tension over breakfast, to Stephen being quietly pushed out of his own home. Use it to find your place in the text and to see why each scene is there.
The day opens with performance and ends with an open wound. A comic ritual slowly turns into an argument about grief.
1. Mulligan's mock Mass
lines 1–21Buck Mulligan climbs the tower with a shaving bowl, mirror and razor and burlesques the Catholic Mass.
Why it matters:The episode's first gesture is a performance — it sets the whole book's interest in ritual, mimicry and irreverence.
Notice:“Introibo ad altare Dei” (“I will go in to the altar of God”) are the opening words of the Tridentine Mass. A highly blasphemous start to the book.
2. “Stately, plump” and Stephen's grief
lines 22–80Stephen comes into view; Mulligan teases him, and the English guest Haines hovers in the background.
Why it matters:The central trio — Stephen, Mulligan, Haines — is established, and so is the imbalance of power between them.
Notice:Mulligan does almost all the talking. Watch how rarely Stephen answers out loud.
3. The mother and the “agenbite of inwit”
lines 81–151Mulligan accuses Stephen of refusing to kneel and pray at his dying mother's bedside.
Why it matters:Stephen's grief and guilt become the emotional engine of the chapter — and of his whole storyline.
Notice:“Agenbite of inwit” — an old phrase for the remorse of conscience. It's the first time the book lets you hear Stephen's private pain.
The scene comes down to ground level. Domestic routine becomes a quiet contest over who owns Ireland's language and culture.
4. Preparing breakfast
lines 152–211Mulligan goes down to cook while Stephen stays withdrawn and lost in thought.
Why it matters:The shift from rooftop to hearth lowers the temperature before the chapter's most symbolic visitor arrives.
Notice:Stephen watches more than he participates — his detachment is becoming a stance, not just a mood.
5. The old milkwoman arrives
lines 212–288An old woman delivers the milk; the men talk over and around her.
Why it matters:Critics read her as Ireland herself — the Shan Van Vocht / Cathleen ni Houlihan figure — old, poor, and served by strangers.
Notice:She doesn't speak Irish and doesn't recognise it when Haines does. A nation that's lost its own language, in one small encounter.
Compared with Homer · Athena visits Telemachus
In Book I of the Odyssey a divine visitor comes to Telemachus's hall: Athena, disguised as the stranger Mentes, arrives while the suitors usurp his home, and she rouses the young man to find his own path. Joyce maps the milkwoman onto that arriving outsider — Stuart Gilbert's schema even pairs this scene with Mentor/Athena. But the parallel is pointedly soured: where Homer's visitor is a goddess who recognises Telemachus and gives him purpose, Joyce's visitor is a poor old woman who fails to recognise her own country's language and is talked over by the men around her. The figure who should embody Ireland and inspire Stephen instead leaves him more dispossessed — a divine summons turned into a small humiliation.
6. Breakfast conversation
lines 289–377Haines holds forth on the Irish language and folklore as Stephen grows more alienated.
Why it matters:Questions of nationality, language and cultural ownership move to the centre of the chapter.
Notice:The Englishman is the enthusiast for Irish culture; the Irishman is weary of it. The irony is deliberate.
The chapter ends in dispossession. Stephen loses the key, loses the ground, and chooses exile.
7. The key and the money
lines 378–449Mulligan asks for the tower key and for money Stephen has just earned.
Why it matters:The literal handing-over of the key turns a friendship into a quiet eviction.
Notice:Stephen pays the rent but won't hold the key. Watch who ends up in control of the home.
8. Haines and Stephen on the cliff
lines 450–500Haines offers friendship and invites Stephen to meet again; Stephen stays guarded.
Why it matters:Even kindness arrives on the coloniser's terms, and Stephen senses it.
Notice:Hospitality and ownership keep blurring — every offer comes with a quiet power behind it.
9. “Usurper”
lines 501–endStephen resolves not to return: “I will not sleep here tonight,” and names the situation in a single word — usurper.
Why it matters:He chooses exile over a home that's no longer his, setting his course for the rest of the day.
Notice:The chapter's last word is “Usurper.” Joyce gives Stephen's whole grievance a one-word verdict.
The shape underneath
Read straight through, the episode moves through ritual → accusation → hospitality → dispossession → exile. Critics like Stuart Gilbert and Hugh Kenner see this sequence mirroring both Stephen's state of mind and the opening movements of the Odyssey — the son displaced from his own house. See the Homeric parallel below for how that maps onto Homer.
In modern prose
Eight 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.
What to notice
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.
Context and parallels
The Linati and Gilbert schemas
- Scene
- The Tower
- Hour
- 8:00 AM
- Organ
- —
- Art
- Theology
- Colour
- White, gold
- Symbol
- Heir
- Technic
- Narrative (young)
- Correspondence
- Telemachus
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.
- What does Introibo ad altare Dei mean?
- It is Latin for 'I will go in to the altar of God' — the opening words of the Tridentine Mass, spoken by the priest as he approaches the altar. Buck Mulligan shouts it while mockingly performing a parody of the Mass atop the Martello tower, turning a sacred invocation into a piece of blasphemous theatre. It sets the tone for the whole novel, where the sacred and the ordinary are continually and deliberately swapped.
Project Gutenberg, public domain.
Further reading
Guides, essays and Daily Companion days that go further into Telemachus.
- 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 1: On the roof of the Martello Tower, just after eight in the morningWe open on a seaside tower south of Dublin.
- Daily Companion, Day 4: The old milkwoman arrivesAn old woman climbs up to deliver the morning milk.
- Daily Companion, Day 6: The key, the swim, and the last wordAt the water Mulligan plunges in.
- 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 Martello Tower, Sandycove sits on Bloom's day.