What does Stephen mean by “a shout in the street”?
“A shout in the street” is Stephen's definition of God in Episode 2. Mr Deasy has just said that all history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. Stephen points to the noise of boys playing hockey outside: that is God.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 2, Nestor. Stephen, in Mr Deasy's study, as shouts come in from the playing field.
—What? Mr Deasy asked. —A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.
What it means in plain English
Just before, Stephen has said history is a nightmare from which he is trying to awake. Deasy answers with a grand Christian view of history. Stephen's reply brings God down to the noise of ordinary life.
It can be read as a joke, a rejection of Deasy, or a serious belief that the sacred is in the everyday.
Literary context
The exchange follows directly on “History is a nightmare”, the episode's most famous line.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 2, “Nestor”
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Is Stephen being serious?
Partly. It mocks Deasy, but also hints that God, if anywhere, is in ordinary life.
Related terms
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"
"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" is spoken by Stephen Dedalus to Mr Deasy, the headmaster of the school where he teaches, in "Nestor" (Episode 2). Stephen means that the weight of the past, Irish, Catholic and personal, feels like a bad dream he cannot escape.
Mr Deasy
Garrett Deasy is the headmaster of the school in Dalkey where Stephen teaches in Episode 2. A pompous Ulster unionist, he pays Stephen his wages, lectures him on thrift, blames women and Jews for history's disasters, and asks him to place a letter about foot-and-mouth disease in the papers.
Stephen Dedalus
The young writer who opens the novel — brilliant, grieving, and adrift. Joyce's Telemachus, the searching son.