What is the last line of Ulysses?
The last words of Ulysses are "and yes I said yes I will Yes." They end Molly Bloom's long, unpunctuated monologue in the final episode, "Penelope", as she remembers the day Leopold Bloom proposed to her on Howth Head and she agreed to marry him.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Episode 18, Penelope. Molly Bloom, lying awake in bed at 7 Eccles Street in the early hours of 17 June 1904.
and yes I said yes I will Yes.
What it means in plain English
The final episode is Molly's thoughts as she lies beside her sleeping husband. It runs to eight huge "sentences" with almost no punctuation. She thinks about her afternoon with Blazes Boylan, her past lovers, her body, her daughter and her husband.
At the end her mind drifts back to Howth Head, where Bloom proposed to her years before, among the rhododendrons. She remembers drawing him down to her and saying yes. The memory turns into the book's closing words.
The capital "Yes" and the full stop are the first firm ending in a long rush of unstopped thought. After a day of doubt, betrayal and grief, the book stops on agreement.
Literary context
In a letter to his friend Frank Budgen, Joyce wrote that the episode "begins and ends with the female word yes". The ending does not solve the Blooms' marriage, but it leaves it open to hope.
It also answers the first episode. The book begins with Mulligan mocking a sacred ritual and ends with Molly affirming a human one.
References
- Ulysses, Episode 18, "Penelope"
- James Joyce, letter to Frank Budgen, 16 August 1921
- Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (revised edition, 1982)
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Questions readers ask
Who says the last line of Ulysses?
Molly Bloom, Leopold Bloom's wife, in her own thoughts at the end of the "Penelope" episode.
What is Molly saying yes to?
She is remembering accepting Bloom's marriage proposal on Howth Head. The yes is a memory, but it also reads as a yes to life and, perhaps, to Bloom again.
Why does Penelope have no punctuation?
Joyce wanted it to feel like an unbroken flow of thought from a half-sleeping mind. Leaving out punctuation makes the reader follow Molly's mind as it moves.
Related terms
The first line of Ulysses
The first line of Ulysses is "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." It opens the novel at the Martello tower in Sandycove on the morning of 16 June 1904, with Mulligan mock-celebrating Mass using his shaving bowl.
Molly Bloom
Leopold's wife, a singer, whose long unpunctuated monologue closes the book on the word 'yes.' Joyce's Penelope.
Leopold Bloom
The central character: a kind, curious advertising canvasser whose wanderings give the novel its shape. Joyce's modern Odysseus.