Why is Episode 17 of Ulysses called Ithaca?

Joyce maps Episode 17 onto Books 22–23 of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus, having reached his palace on Ithaca, kills the suitors, is recognised by Penelope through the secret of their bed, and finally lies down beside her. The Joycean equivalent is Bloom's arrival home at 7 Eccles Street with Stephen Dedalus at around 2 a.m.: a return home, the contemplation of an unfaithful marriage bed, and a quiet rather than violent restoration of order.

What happens in Episode 17?

Bloom and Stephen arrive at 7 Eccles Street. Bloom has forgotten his key, climbs over the railings into the basement area, and lets Stephen in by the front door. They sit in the kitchen drinking cocoa, urinate together in the garden under the stars, and Stephen declines Bloom's offer of a bed for the night and walks off. Bloom enters the bedroom, finds traces of Boylan, lies down at the foot of the bed with his head at Molly's feet, kisses her rump, and falls asleep.

Why is the chapter written as questions and answers?

Joyce's technique here is 'catechism (impersonal)' — a deliberately scientific, encyclopaedic, almost legal-textbook prose, in the form of question and answer. Joyce called it 'a mathematical catechism' and his own favourite chapter. The cold objectivity is a moral choice: after the emotional fireworks of Circe and the slumped fatigue of Eumaeus, the homecoming itself is rendered with the level voice of a scientific report — as if to insist that what is happening matters precisely because it is ordinary.

What does Bloom find in the bed?

Traces of Blazes Boylan — crumbs of potted meat, the indent of a male body. The chapter records these facts in the same neutral catechistic voice it uses for everything else: temperature of the cocoa, height of the railings, contents of a desk drawer. The form is the point: Bloom's marriage is restored not by violence but by his ability to record what has happened without being destroyed by it.

Why is the chapter important?

Ithaca is the novel's true homecoming. It is the chapter in which Bloom finally returns to his bed, finally faces (and accepts) Molly's afternoon, and finally falls asleep beside her in his strange head-to-foot posture. It is also Joyce's most radically formal experiment — a chapter that proves a marriage can be saved by perspective as much as by action.

7 Eccles Street · Kitchen · 2 a.m.

Catechism — A Homecoming in Q & A

Cocoa · Astronomy · The list · The bed · The dot

Ep. XVII · 17 vi 1904

Episode XVII · Ithaca · The Homecoming

Ithaca: A Homecoming as Mathematical Catechism.

Episode 17 of Ulysses moves Homer's slaughter of the suitors and the olive-tree bed into 7 Eccles Street at 2 a.m. — a kitchen, a garden under the stars, a brass bed, all rendered in the most radical prose experiment in the book: a calm, scientific, question-and-answer catechism. Joyce's own favourite chapter.

"Womb? Weary? He rests. He has travelled."
Ulysses, Episode 17 (closing)

Leopold Bloom

Returning householder

Stephen Dedalus

Departing guest

Odysseus

King returning home

Penelope

Waiting in the bed

Plain-English mode

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§1 · Why "Ithaca"?

A palace, a kitchen, a catechism.

In Books 22–23 of the Odyssey, Odysseus kills the suitors of his wife, is recognised by Penelope through the secret of their marriage bed, and falls asleep beside her at last.

Joyce keeps the homecoming and changes almost every detail of its execution. The slaughter becomes a list; the recognition becomes a cup of cocoa; the bed becomes a brass bedstead Molly was born in; the embrace becomes a kiss at the foot of the bed; the language becomes the most experimental of the novel — a deadpan question-and-answer catechism that treats the height of a railing and the heat-death of the universe with the same level voice. Joyce called it his favourite chapter.

The homecoming arrives — and the prose insists on its ordinariness as a moral act.

c. 8th c. BCE
Homer's Odyssey
Odysseus kills the suitors and lies down beside Penelope
1888
7 Eccles Street
The Joyce/Byrne address that becomes Bloom's home
17 June 1904, ~2 a.m.
Eccles Street kitchen
Cocoa, garden, bedroom — the homecoming proper
1921
Drafted
Joyce's favourite chapter to write
1922
Publication
Ulysses appears in Paris

§2 · Odyssey Primer

Ithaca in The Odyssey — in brief.

Reaching his palace at last, Odysseus and Telemachus, with the help of two faithful servants, bar the doors of the great hall and kill the suitors who have been consuming Penelope's substance for years.

Penelope, cautious after twenty years, tests Odysseus by ordering their bed moved out of the bedroom. He answers that the bed cannot be moved — its bedpost is a living olive tree, rooted in the floor. Only her husband could know this. She accepts him.

They go up to the rooted bed and Athena holds back the dawn so the night can be long enough. Joyce keeps the structure of return + recognition + bed and changes every modality.

§3 · How Homer becomes Dublin

Six transformations, from the palace to the kitchen.

Homer

Odysseus disguised, arriving at his palace

Joyce

Bloom keyless, climbing over the railings

Odysseus comes home disguised as a beggar to test his household. Bloom comes home having forgotten his key and is forced to climb the railings, drop into the basement area, and let Stephen in through the front door. The Homeric stratagem becomes a small comic indignity — and yet the meaning is the same: the master of the house is forced to re-enter his own home from outside.

Did he fall? By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical self-weighing in the premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north…
Ulysses, Episode 17

keyrailingreturn

§4 · Who's Who

Homeric counterparts in Episode 17.

Ithaca stages 7 Eccles Street as the homecoming palace — and treats every object in it with the seriousness Homer reserves for kings.

Ulysses	Odyssey counterpart	Note
Leopold Bloom	Odysseus at the threshold	Forgotten key, climb over railings, cocoa in the kitchen, head at the foot of the bed
Stephen Dedalus	Telemachus departing	Accepts cocoa, declines the bed, walks off into the small hours
Molly Bloom	Penelope in the marriage bed	Off-stage but felt — the centre toward which the chapter moves
Boylan	The chief suitor	Present only as crumbs in the bed and as one name on a long list
The cocoa	Homeric hospitality	Prepared with liturgical exactness — the chapter's quiet sacrament
The brass bedstead	The olive-tree bed	Heirloom from Molly's father in Gibraltar; the centre of the home
The closing dot	Sleep at last	Joyce demanded an oversized period — the chapter's final gesture

Linati Schema (1920)

Scene: The House. Art: Science. Symbol: Comets. Technique: Catechism (impersonal).

Gilbert Schema (1921)

Organ: skeleton. Colour: none. Hour: 2 a.m.

Homeric correspondences

Palace → 7 Eccles St. Suitors → a list. Olive bed → brass bedstead.

§5 · Key themes

Ten threads through the homecoming.

✜

Catechism

Q&A format gives the homecoming the calm of a textbook.

✤

Cocoa

The chapter's modest, exact sacrament.

♪

Stars

Cosmic scale beside small bodies — the chapter's signature.

❦

The list

Suitors enumerated, not slain.

✺

The bed

Centre of the home, marked by Boylan's traces.

❦

Non-violence

Joyce's most pacifist re-reading of an epic.

✜

Head-to-foot

Bloom's strange, tender bedroom posture.

✤

Sinbad

Nursery rhyme as falling-asleep music.

♪

The dot

Joyce's most famous piece of punctuation.

✺

Symmetry

Bloom and Stephen briefly mirrored in the kitchen.

§6 · Quotations & close reading

Homer beside Joyce.

Homer

"And the heart of the godlike Odysseus laughed, for he saw the bed standing there as he had built it."

Odyssey, Book XXIII

Joyce

"What did the first drawer unlocked contain? … Three typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o P.O. Westland Row…"

Ulysses, Episode 17

Why this matters

Homer's recognition is built around a secret carved bed. Joyce's modern recognition is built around the catalogue of a desk drawer — a household inventoried into knowing itself.

Homer

"Then bow-bearing Odysseus, having stripped off his rags, leapt upon the great threshold with the bow and the quiver full of arrows, and shot the suitors one by one."

Odyssey, Book XXII

Joyce

"If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one."

Ulysses, Episode 17

Why this matters

Homer's hero kills his rivals with a bow. Joyce's hero answers them with a sentence — the slaughter has migrated entirely into the chapter's cold, level mind.

Homer

"And the two went up to the place of their bed of old, glad to come together once more."

Odyssey, Book XXIII

Joyce

"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump … with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation."

Ulysses, Episode 17

Why this matters

Joyce keeps the embrace and reshapes its body: tender, slightly absurd, very specifically itself. Marriage as something you climb back into, even after it has been disturbed.

§7 · Modernity vs Epic

A palace homecoming, rewritten as a kitchen.

Homer

A bow, a slaughter, a secret bed

A king strings his bow, kills more than a hundred men, and proves his identity by knowing his bed is rooted in a tree. The homecoming is bloody and total.

Joyce

A cocoa, a list, a brass bedstead

A middle-aged advertising canvasser makes hot chocolate, names the men who have come before him without killing any of them, and lies down at the foot of the bed in deference and love. The homecoming is bloodless and total.

Joyce keeps every shape of the Homeric homecoming and changes the body of every action. The arrow becomes a sentence; the embrace becomes a kiss at the foot of the bed.

§8 · Why this episode matters

The novel's true homecoming — and Joyce's most radical form.

Ithaca is the chapter Joyce called his favourite. It is also the chapter in which Bloom, after a full day of being insulted, fantasised about, propositioned and walked around the city, finally lies down beside his wife — and does so with a kiss and without violence.

The catechism is not coldness; it is a moral form. By giving Boylan's crumbs and the stars the same level voice, Joyce shows a marriage that survives not because its facts are flattering but because they can be looked at without flinching. The most experimental chapter in the book is also its most tender.

A modern homecoming: knowing everything, killing no-one, and falling asleep at the foot of the bed.

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All Homeric Parallels →

§9 · FAQ

Quick answers.

Joyce maps Episode 17 onto Books 22–23 of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus, having reached his palace on Ithaca, kills the suitors, is recognised by Penelope through the secret of their bed, and finally lies down beside her. The Joycean equivalent is Bloom's arrival home at 7 Eccles Street with Stephen Dedalus at around 2 a.m.: a return home, the contemplation of an unfaithful marriage bed, and a quiet rather than violent restoration of order.