A complete chapter-by-chapter summary of James Joyce's Ulysses, with all 18 episodes explained. Each card gives you the basics: the Dublin location, the time of day, the Homeric parallel, a plain-English summary of what happens, and the key themes to listen for. Read them in order, or dip in wherever you are in the book.
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6 of 18 episodes
“Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.”
Leopold Bloom arrives. He cooks a kidney for breakfast, feeds the cat, brings Molly her post — including a letter from Blazes Boylan — and quietly senses what's coming.
“Bath. Cleanse from drugs of the day.”
Bloom drifts through the city, picks up a flirtatious letter under a false name, watches Mass, and ends in the warm narcotic of a public bath.
“How many! All these here once walked round Dublin.”
Bloom rides in a funeral carriage to the burial of Paddy Dignam, reflecting on death, his lost son Rudy, and his father's suicide.
“Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.”
A chapter written like music. Bloom eats dinner alone as barmaids flirt and Simon Dedalus sings, while Boylan rides off to meet Molly.
“I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P.”
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.
“Preparatory to anything else…”
Exhausted, Bloom takes Stephen for coffee in a late-night shelter. The tired prose drifts as the two finally talk, sort of, beside a dubious sailor.