In Homer's Odyssey: Circe is a beautiful nymph who is expert in magic potions, and when a number of Odysseus's sailors find her on an island in Book X, she feeds them and turns them all into swine. One sailor escapes unharmed to warn Odysseus, and with protection against her spells provided by the god Hermes, Odysseus is able to negotiate the release of his men. Odysseus and his crew remain on the island, he as Circe's lover, for a year.

Magic [Dance, The Man-Hating Orc]

Circe—Bella

[The beasts, Telemachus, Ulysses, Hermes]

General comments on "Circe":

• Not stream of consciousness in this episode, but hallucinatory "stream of subconscious," brought about mainly through ghostly apparitions (Stephen's mother, Bloom's father and grandfather, e.g.) and fantasies (the coronation of King Leopold I, e.g.).
  
  
• Lengthy! More than twice as long as the next longest section of the novel, 8-10 times longer than most. Partly a product of the dual time-frames of "reality" and, independent of time, the subconscious: the subconscious hallucinations take place more or less "unbeknownst" to Bloom while he experiences in his conscious mind what goes on about him.
  
  
• Squalor! What Joyce calls Nighttown was actually known as "Monto," after Montgomery Street, and according to Richard Ellmann, the area was "labeled around 1885 by the Encyclopedia Britannica as the worst slum in Europe" (377).
  
  
• The opening lines describe a gruesome, grisly scene with all sorts of hideous and grotesque figures moving about in this squalid Nighttown. Joyce seems to equate this dark, scary terrain with the dark and somewhat scary terrain of the subconscious.
  
  
• The brothel and whores seem to signify the importance of sex in the subconscious (think Freud).
  
  
• It can be extremely difficult to distinguish "real" events from the hallucinatory, though most of the hallucinations are brought about initially by subconscious associations Bloom makes with what he sees and experiences in the moment "really." Naturally, floating throughout the subconscious are elements, characters, and even phrases that Bloom has noted or experienced earlier in the day (much as we often dream of what has been on our mind before we sleep). Hugh Kenner estimates that only about 10% of this episode presents "real" events, with hallucination the remaining 90%.
  
  
• Stephen's guilt about his mother is obvious; Bloom has guilt over leaving the house and church of his father, Molly (he is in a brothel), his correspondence with Martha, lust, and perverseness, among other things).
  
  
• From Daniel Schwartz, in Reading Joyce's Ulysses: "By refusing to separate clearly the surface events from the hallucinations and fantasies, Joyce demonstrates for us that external events and unconscious life cannot be meaningfully distinguished" (207).
  
  
• Two climaxes in the episode: Stephen's confronting his mother—his attachment to her and his feelings of guilt in her death; and the apparition of Rudy to Bloom, which "seals the paternal connection with Bloom and Stephen" (Robert Spirko).

In Homer's Odyssey: Book XIII depicts Odysseus reaching Ithaca at last, where Athena disguises him as an old beggar. In Book XIV he is taken in and shown hospitality by his loyal and kind old swineherd, Eumaeus. In Book XVI Telemachus joins Odysseus in Eumaeus's hut, and Odysseus reveals his true identity. The three of them make plans to kill the suitors and reclaim Odysseus's household.  

The Shelter

12:00 p.m.-1:00 a.m.

Nerves

Navigation
[The Ambush at Home]

[None]

Sailors

Narrative (old)
[Relaxed prose]

Eumaeus—Skin-the-Goat

Ulysses, Pseudoangelos —the sailor

Melanthious—Corley

[Ulysses, Telemachus]

General comments on "Eumaeus":

• Richard Ellmann, in Ulysses on the Liffey, describes the style of this episode as "constabular . . . as it struggles clumsily for the right expression and invariably hits one that is inept as well as stereotyped. Bloom's bloomisms, which were only occasional heretofore, now become continuous. He appears much reduced from that heroic rescuer and artist we saw at the end of the brothel scene. Not being able to keep up with Stephen intellectually, yet eager to do so, he puts himself at a disadvantage. Part of the trouble is fatigue: he is fagged out, and so is the language which describes him" (151).
  
  
• The episode is concerned with doubles, mistakes, deceptions, and disguises in great variety. Bloom's language is riddled with errors; Bloom and Stephen take a wrong turn and have to "double back through Dublin; they meet Lord John Corley, who is not actually a lord, and who mistakes Bloom for a friend of Blazes Boylan. Stephen misidentifies coins, and the keeper of the shelter is wrongly identified as Fitzharris, Skin-the-Goat, a man involved in the famous "Phoenix Park murders." Bloom and Stephen discuss lies, deceptions, and mistakes of all sorts, and even Hynes's article on Dignam's funeral is filled with errors. Bloom suspects that Murphy the sailor is actually a convict.  And more! (Michelle Hall).
  
  
• Richard Ellmann notes that age is also a central concern in the episode: Bloom seems to have aged much since the morning (a matter of fatigue, perhaps), and old age becomes an increasing focus in the final three chapters of the book (151).
  
  
• The theme of paternity is important as well, of course. Bloom and Stephen have their significant differences, in age, education, temperament, and more, but they do come to a sort of union in the end.