Why is Episode 9 of Ulysses called Scylla and Charybdis?

Joyce maps Episode 9 onto Book 12 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus must steer his ship between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Joyce calls his chapter 'Scylla and Charybdis' because Stephen Dedalus, in the National Library, must steer his Shakespeare theory between the two equally dangerous philosophical poles of Aristotle (the rock) and Plato (the whirlpool).

What happens in Episode 9 of Ulysses?

Around 2 p.m. in the National Library of Ireland, Stephen Dedalus performs an elaborate, partly-believed argument that the ghost in Hamlet is Shakespeare himself, mourning his cuckolded marriage and dead son Hamnet. His audience: the librarian Lyster, the Quaker mystic AE (George Russell), the editor John Eglinton, and the librarian Best. Buck Mulligan crashes in late with mockery. Bloom passes through the same building and brushes shoulders with Stephen on the way out.

Who is the Scylla figure and who is the Charybdis figure?

Joyce uses the dual hazard as a metaphor, not as two characters. Aristotle (substance, rock-like, definite) is Scylla; Plato (mysticism, formless, whirlpool-like) is Charybdis. Among the librarians, John Eglinton (sceptical, Aristotelian) sits on one side; AE (theosophical, Platonic) on the other. Stephen, like Odysseus, must steer between them with his Shakespeare argument.

What is Stephen's Shakespeare theory?

Stephen argues that Shakespeare is the cuckolded ghost-father in Hamlet, that his wife Ann Hathaway betrayed him, that Hamnet is the dead son who haunts every play, and that art is created out of personal wound. The theory matters less as biography than as Stephen's veiled self-portrait: a son who refuses his father, an artist who needs a father, a Telemachus seeking an Odysseus.

Why is the chapter important?

Scylla & Charybdis is the novel's intellectual centre — and the moment of the second great near-miss: Bloom passes between Stephen and Mulligan on the library steps. The Odyssey's narrow strait between two monsters becomes the doorway through which the father and son almost see each other.

National Library of Ireland · Catalogue Card

Dedalus, Stephen.

A theory concerning the ghost in Hamlet.

Shelf · Ep. IX · 16 vi 1904

Episode IX · Scylla & Charybdis · Dialectic & the Father

Scylla & Charybdis: A Theory Between Two Monsters.

Episode 9 of Ulysses moves Homer's narrow strait into the librarian's office of the National Library — and steers Stephen Dedalus's Shakespeare theory between Aristotle's rock and Plato's whirlpool while Bloom passes silently through.

"A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting."
Ulysses, Episode 9

Stephen Dedalus

Arguing Hamlet

Buck Mulligan

Mocking, late

Odysseus

Hand on the tiller

Scylla & Charybdis

Two deaths, no third way

Plain-English mode

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§1 · Why "Scylla & Charybdis"?

Two monsters, one young man's argument.

In Book 12 of the Odyssey, Circe warns Odysseus that he must steer his ship through a narrow strait flanked by two inescapable deaths: Scylla, a six-headed monster on the cliff, and Charybdis, a whirlpool that sucks down whole ships. There is no third route.

Joyce relocates the strait to the librarian's office of the National Library of Ireland. Stephen Dedalus, performing his Hamlet theory before a small audience of Irish literati, must steer between Aristotelian fact (the rock of biography) and Platonic mysticism (the whirlpool of formless idea) — and keep his argument afloat.

The epic strait becomes a sentence held precisely on course.

c. 8th c. BCE
Homer's Odyssey
Odysseus passes between Scylla and Charybdis
c. 1601
Shakespeare writes Hamlet
The play Stephen reads as autobiographical
1890s
Irish Literary Revival
AE, Yeats, Eglinton shape the room Stephen will face
16 June 1904, ~2 p.m.
National Library, Kildare St.
Stephen's Shakespeare lecture in the librarian's office
1922
Publication
Ulysses appears in Paris

§2 · Odyssey Primer

Scylla and Charybdis in The Odyssey — in brief.

Leaving Circe's island, Odysseus is warned of a narrow strait. On one side is Scylla, a six-headed monster who will pluck six of his men from the ship; on the other is Charybdis, a whirlpool who would swallow the ship entire.

Circe's grim counsel: better to lose six men to Scylla than the whole crew to Charybdis. Odysseus, against orders, arms himself and tries to face the monster — and loses his six men anyway. The ship sails through.

Book 12 is the Odyssey's parable of impossible choice — and Joyce takes it as his template for the chapter in which Stephen, like Odysseus, must accept a partial loss to keep his argument moving.

✦

Rock

❦

Whirl

☍

Book

≈

Ghost

✺

Strait

§3 · How Homer becomes Dublin

Six transformations, from the strait to the library.

Homer

Odysseus steering between two monsters

Joyce

Stephen Dedalus arguing his Shakespeare theory

Circe warns Odysseus he must pass between Scylla and Charybdis: there is no third route. Stephen, in the librarian's office, must argue his Hamlet theory between the rock of dogmatic Aristotelianism and the whirlpool of theosophical Platonism. The hero's hand on the tiller becomes a young man's sentence held precisely between two intellectual deaths.

—I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere.
Ulysses, Episode 9 (Mulligan)

dialecticShakespeareargument

§4 · Who's Who

Homeric counterparts in Episode 9.

Scylla & Charybdis stages the National Library as Homer's strait — a narrow room in which every word risks one of two philosophical drownings.

Ulysses	Odyssey counterpart	Note
Stephen Dedalus	Odysseus at the strait	Steering between two intellectual deaths
John Eglinton	Scylla (Aristotelian rock)	Sceptical, biographical, immovable
AE (George Russell)	Charybdis (Platonic whirlpool)	Theosophical, formless, dissolving
Buck Mulligan	The tempting crewman	His comic interruptions threaten to sink the argument
Lyster, Best (librarians)	The crew at the oars	Polite, helpful, slightly afraid
Leopold Bloom	Odysseus glimpsed from afar	Passes between Stephen and Mulligan on the library steps

Linati Schema (1920)

Scene: The Library. Art: Literature. Symbol: Stratford — London (the doubled cities of Shakespeare).

Gilbert Schema (1921)

Organ: brain. Technique: dialectic. Colour: none specified.

Homeric correspondences

Scylla → Aristotle / Eglinton. Charybdis → Plato / AE. Odysseus → Stephen at argument.

§5 · Key themes

Ten threads through the library afternoon.

✦

Dialectic

The chapter is built as a Socratic skirmish: thesis vs whirlpool.

❦

Shakespeare

Hamlet read as autobiography — and Stephen's veiled self-portrait.

✤

Fatherhood

Stephen's argument is really about the missing father Bloom will become.

✜

Aristotle vs Plato

Substance vs spirit, fact vs essence, Stratford vs Theosophy.

✺

The library

The chapter's sole location: Kildare Street, the room of the librarians.

✦

Mulligan

The comic Charybdis: laughter that would suck all meaning down.

❦

Hamnet

Shakespeare's dead son, the silent ghost behind the chapter's theory.

✤

Anne Hathaway

The cuckolded biography Stephen needs — and Bloom is living.

✜

Mathematics

Schema-art Literature; the chapter delights in formal structure.

✺

The threshold

Bloom's passing between Stephen and Mulligan: the day's central near-miss.

§6 · Quotations & close reading

Homer beside Joyce.

Homer

"On the one hand lay Scylla and on the other mighty Charybdis terribly sucked down the salt sea water."

Odyssey, Book XII (public domain trans.)

Joyce

"—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet."

Ulysses, Episode 9

Why this matters

Homer's literal two-monster strait becomes a literary argument with the same shape: two opposing pressures, no middle, and a young man trying to hold his course between them.

Homer

"Better far to lose six of thy company than thy whole crew."

Odyssey, Book XII (Circe to Odysseus)

Joyce

"Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. … He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage."

Ulysses, Episode 9

Why this matters

Circe's grim arithmetic — accept some loss to save the ship — becomes Stephen's strategy of forced laughter. He sacrifices a piece of his theory rather than be eaten whole.

Homer

"Three times in the day she belcheth it forth, and three times a day she sucketh it down terribly."

Odyssey, Book XII (Charybdis)

Joyce

"Formless spiritual. … Plato's world of ideas. Allfather, the heavenly man."

Ulysses, Episode 9

Why this matters

Charybdis's cyclical swallowing is Joyce's image for Russell's theosophy: a perpetual oral motion that takes in everything and produces only itself.

§7 · Modernity vs Epic

Two sea-monsters, rewritten as two philosophies.

Homer

Physical strait

A hero clutches the tiller of a small ship and steers between two literal monsters of stone and water. The danger is salt.

Joyce

Mental strait

A young man in a small library room holds a Shakespeare argument together between fact and mysticism. The danger is being right about the wrong thing.

Joyce keeps the strait and changes the substance — the sea has been replaced by the syllabus.

§8 · Why this episode matters

The novel's intellectual centre — and its first crossing.

Scylla & Charybdis is Stephen's chapter: his most sustained performance, his most polished theory, and his clearest confession. The Shakespeare argument is really an argument about needing a father, and Bloom — who walks unseen between him and Mulligan on the way out — is the answer Stephen cannot yet recognise.

The chapter is also the end of the novel's morning. From here Joyce abandons even the pretence of orderly narration and the stylistic experiments take over. The hero has passed the strait; the open sea is everything that follows.

Two ships, two strangers, one doorway. The Odyssey resumes in the threshold.

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Stephen Dedalus guide →

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All Homeric Parallels →

§9 · FAQ

Quick answers.

Joyce maps Episode 9 onto Book 12 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus must steer his ship between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis. Joyce calls his chapter 'Scylla and Charybdis' because Stephen Dedalus, in the National Library, must steer his Shakespeare theory between the two equally dangerous philosophical poles of Aristotle (the rock) and Plato (the whirlpool).