Chapter 17

Ithaca Summary

The time is 2 a.m. The place is 7, Eccles Street. Bloom brings Stephen to his house. The two sit and talk for a time, before Stephen leaves and Bloom retires for what is left of the night. Bloom does not have his key. So he has to climb over the railing and get in through the back door. He lets Stephen in through the front. He puts a kettle on and washes. Stephen refuses to wash. Bloom takes this as a sign of his high minded contempt for the world. As he rummages through the kitchen drawers, Bloom finds two torn betting slips. His mind turns to the curious misunderstanding Bantam Lyon had had about the dayÂ’s race. He makes some cocoa. He assumes that the silent Stephen is thinking about a poem. He broods over his own literary ambitions. The two men think about previous occasions when they met. They differ in a number of ways. But they feel that the crossing of their paths had stitched them together in a mystic union. They have become Blephen and Stoom. One is artistic and the other is scientific. They are nevertheless consubstantial, like Virag and Henry Flower. The vision of the two as father and son comes to predominate here.

He unlocks a private drawer to deposit his latest letter from Martha, and is stimulated to recollection and guilty regret by some memories of his youth and his father that he finds there. He thinks again of the day he has passed, and particularly of the many frustrations he experienced.

Then he goes up to the bedroom. He observes his wife and the furnishings. He accepts these as his proper lot. To change anything will be too hard. So he passively resigns himself to Molly, to himself, and to Boylan and the other adulterers. He climbs into bed with Molly. After telling her about his day he curls up in a prenatal posture and goes to sleep.

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