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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8 of 18 episodes
“Ineluctable modality of the visible.”
Stephen walks the beach, lost in dense philosophical thought about perception, memory, and shape-shifting. A famously interior chapter.
“In the heart of the Hibernian metropolis.”
A chapter told in newspaper headlines. Bloom tries to place an ad while editors, lawyers, and Stephen swap rhetoric, gossip, and jokes.
“Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butterscotch.”
Hungry Bloom wanders past food shops and pubs, recoils at a brutal lunchtime crowd, and settles for a quiet cheese sandwich at Davy Byrne's.
“He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather.”
Stephen performs a dazzling, half-serious theory of Hamlet to a circle of Dublin literati. Bloom passes through the library on his own errand.
“Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields…”
Nineteen short scenes track minor and major characters crossing the city at the same hour, stitched together by glimpses of a viceregal procession.
“The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace.”
Gerty MacDowell daydreams in the style of cheap romance novels while Bloom watches from a distance. Fireworks; a charged, private moment.
“Deshil Holles Eamus.”
Bloom visits a friend in labour. Medical students drink upstairs; the prose grows from Anglo-Saxon to modern slang, mirroring the development of a child.
“What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?”
Bloom brings Stephen home. The chapter answers everything in cold catechism — kettles, water, urination under the stars — before Bloom finally goes to bed.