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MonkeyNotes-Ulysses by James Joyce
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Chapter 2
Nestor
Summary
The time is 10 a.m. Stephen is teaching a class. He leads his
class through a history lesson on the life of Pyrrhus, coaching
them and prompting them towards the right answers. At the
same time, he broods over his inadequacies as a teacher and his
clownish behavior before friends such as Haines. The class
moves on to recitation of MiltonÂ’s Lycidas, but Stephen, his
mind still on the problems of history and his own state of mind,
finds his thoughts full of his student days in Paris when he
studied Aristotle. The repeated lines of MiltonÂ’s elegy remind
him of his religious doubts.
At ten oÂ’clock, the class breaks up. The boys go off to play
hockey. Stephen dismisses them with an uncomprehendible
riddle of the fox burying his grandmother. Death and its impact
on the living runs in his mind. The boy Sargent stays behind, to
show some extra mathematical exercises he has been told to
complete. He does not understand the work. Stephen gently
explains it to him. SargentÂ’s mother must have loved him, and
thinks Stephen, "Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this
gracelessness." After the boy goes off to the hockey match,
Stephen waits for Mr. Deasy, the headmaster, who is outside
settling some schoolboy altercation. Mr. Deasy himself lectures
to Stephen on the need for financial caution. Stephen
remembers his heavy debts. Knowing that Stephen has friends
in the editorial offices of the Dublin newspapers, Mr. Deasy
solicits his help in publishing a letter recommending a new
treatment for foot-and-mouth disease. While Stephen waits, he
types out the trite and vulgar sentences typical of the mindless
enthusiast. Mr. Deasy feels that powerful influences are at work
to still his voice: "England is in the hands of the Jews." Stephen
tries vainly to stem the headmasterÂ’s scurrilous outbursts by
reasoned objections. His mind again wanders to his experiences
in France. Mr. Deasy concludes by prophesying that Stephen
will not long remain a teacher. He patronizingly claims to enjoy
his debates with the young man. He calls him back for a final,
feeble sally against the Jews.
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