The chapter contains a powerful symbol, namely the stick carried by Stephen. Plainly stick implies creative power. In the first chapter it is described as Stephen’s "familiar" or attendant spirit. The stick there trails impotently down the path. Entering Nighttown Stephen flourishes an ash plant stick, which Lynch calls "yellow". "Take up your crutch and walk", says he. He advises Stephen to become the artist he pretends to be. Idle no more, stick puts out Bella’s light. It destroys the old before creating the new. Stephen breaks the chandelier lamp at Bella Cohen’s. His stick almost becomes a symbol of his pilgrimage to creativity and self-awareness. This chapter provides the reader with answers to many questions raised earlier in the novel. Stephen and Bloom come together. We see fully revealed the barrenness of Bloom’s marriage. The perversities that have been hinted at earlier fall naturally into place in the encyclopedic record of his daydreams. Earlier comments on Freemasonry are confirmed here. Bloom is clearly a member of the order. For the first time in Ulysses, we sense the crucial force of Stephen’s theological cast of mind and the despair of his personal and family situations. We see in this chapter the destructive power of Dublin. It is dreadful in its slums and eaten away by English influence.

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