Episode 16 - "Eumaeus"

The time is one a.m., on the day after Bloomsday - so, June 17, 1904. Bloom helps Dedalus walk to a cab shelter, a kind of canteen for those out late at night, where he tries to sober Dedalus up, buying him nearly undrinkable coffee and a hard roll. Bloom also starts to feel like a father to the young man. The shabby, talkative sailor and cabbies who share the shelter with them lend some color to the episode, along with the caretaker of the shelter, Skin-of-the-Goat (rumored to be involved in a famous robbery), but mostly it is Bloom's thoughts about Stephen which dominate. Bloom finds him to be smart, well-educated (remarking several times on his B.A.), handsome, well-spoken, and with another most important quality - a very fine tenor singing voice and the knowledge of many songs in different languages. At one point,in the shelter, Bloom reads a newspaper account of the funeral he attended, only to find his name misspelled, along with other errors. He is constantly insulted in the course of the book, as is Stephen for that matter. They are together in their "outsiderness." Bloom shows Dedalus and the occupants of the shelter a photo of his hefty wife, dressed in a gown with a very low neckline, commenting on his views of feminine pulchritude, of which he has many. He is such a randy fellow! However, he is brought up short by his recollection of the Boylan/Molly affair in his own bed today, but then he quickly returns to fathering Dedalus and guiding him back to the Bloom house, to sleep off his very serious case of drunkeness. Bloom also lectures Dedalus on getting rid of his false friends - Mulligan and his medical school pals. At the end of the episode, Dedalus sings a German song in a thrilling tenor voice, and the two men walk toward the Bloom residence like a couple of close friends, observed by one of the denizens of the night - the driver of a street-sweeping horse cart. The classical allusion in this episode - its parallel to the The Odyssey poem, which James Joyce was following so closely - is the return of Odysseus to his home and his reunion with his son, Telemachus. As Joyce intended, Stephen Dedalus was Telemachus; Molly was Penelope, and Bloom, Odysseus. In this episode, Skin-the-Goat is supposed to represent Eumaeus, who was the swineherd who is most loyal to Odysseus. This is what my Wikipedia guide says, anyway. I don't know enough about The Odyssey to have come up with that one. I'm just delighted that this episode made some sense...and that we are near the end. Two episodes to go...