Calypso

The first episode of part II is a short, almostkindasorta straightforward one. Stephen is gone for the moment, we have rewound the clock a few hours, and we now see a Mr. Leopold Bloom about his morning routine: feeding the cat, cooking breakfast for the wife, nipping round to the butcher's for a nice tasty mutton kidney for himself. As in the early Stephen episodes, we see flashes of inner monologue, and, like Stephen, Bloom's thoughts spring from one subject to the next, each association giving birth to another and so on. The picture is confusing and kaledoscopic at times, as we see thin slices of thoughts juxtaposed, the important cheek-by-jowl with the banal. Some of what we read is enigmatic, only becoming clear later on; other items that are seemingly trifling will echo throughout the day, accumulating meaning with each iteration.

When we are first introduced to Odysseus in Homer, the man of many twists and turns is the captive of the goddess Calypso; an unwilling lover and mate, he longs to be home with his real wife, Penelope. In Ulysses we are introduced to Leopold Bloom, and we see him within the context of his domestic life. He serves his wife food, picks her clothes up off the bed, explains the meaning of a word from a book she's reading, et cetera. We only get a very sketchy picture of Molly at this point; at times she is almost like a disembodied voice emanating from the bedclothes. Bloom also reads a letter from his fifteen-year-old daughter, Milly. Molly receives a letter too, which she quickly hides from Leopold.

In this episode Mr. Bloom seems surrounded by women, under their power, almost beset by them. He even worries that the lady next door will see him ducking into the outhouse. A long day's wandering lies before him, however.