Episode 7 - Aeolus

1. This episode constitutes a distinct break from the style of the opening chapters.  What is the style of this episode?  Does it have anything to do with the episode’s setting?  Also, how does the style relate to the episode in the Odyssey that corresponds to this chapter in Joyce?
2. From the portrait of the characters in this episode, what is Irishness?  Is there any such thing?  What are the common characteristics of Irishness?  Are they primarily positive or negative?  Does Bloom “count” as Irish for you?  Does he “count” as Irish for the men in the episode?  Why/why not?  What about Stephen?
3. What do you make of the fact that both Stephen and Bloom appear in this episode and yet they do not meet?  What might be the narrative investment in having these two barely miss one another?  Is there significance to this?  Why/why not?
4. Think about punning and wordplay in the episode.  How does the way that Joyce uses language make us take him seriously or not?  Is the difficulty of the episode one big joke?  Why/why not?
5. How does the narrative present the relationship between law, journalism, and art?  Why link these three seemingly disparate occupations?  Conversely (but somehow at the same time) why does the narrative distinguish between them and insist on that distinction so strongly?  Think about how these occupations are both similar and different and think about the purpose in binding the three in the narrative.

Episode 8 - Lestrygonians

1. What is the significance of food in this episode?  What do we learn about Bloom from the way he thinks about food?  About drink?  What is the connection (if any) between food and religion / food and politics / food and sex?
2. What do we learn about Bloom’s relationship with Molly in this episode?
3. What do you make of Bloom’s repeated references to Molly’s meeting with Boylan scheduled for later in the afternoon?  Why doesn’t Bloom go home and stop the tryst?  Why does he avoid Boylan in the street?
4. What do you make of the way that the men in Davy Byrne’s pub respond to Bloom?  How they talk about Bloom?  How they talk about Molly?
5. What do you make of Bloom’s career as an adman?  Is it significant?  Why/why not?  What about how Bloom sees the world and the ideas that he has about it?

Episode 9 - Scylla and Charybdis

1. Moving from episode 8 to 9, how does the style change?  How does the narrative slipping into Stephen’s consciousness remind us of and/or differ from entries into Bloom’s consciousness in the previous episode?
2. While this episode is clearly about the figure of the author/artist and what makes great literature/art, it is also about the role of the critic in constructing art.  How does the narrative regard critics generally (think about the conversations between the members of Stephen’s audience)?  In terms of Stephen’s foray into literary criticism, does the narrative seem to support his theories?  Why/why not?   What about critics like Aristotle?  Who has the authority to critique a work of art?  Says who?  Ultimately, on what criteria do we base our judgments about literature?
3. What is the effect of Stephen taking on Shakespeare and Hamlet in this episode?  Is there a reason why this text might be crucial to our understanding of the novel Ulysses?  Do you think there is a relationship between drama and Joyce’s experiments in the narrative?  Also, think about the overwhelming number of allusions to other authors/texts in this episode.  Why bombard the reader with all of these references?  What (if anything) does all of this have to do with the way that we perceive James Joyce as an artist or author?
4. What is the significance of yet another near-miss between Stephen and Bloom?  Why are these two always almost meeting?  What are we to make of the tension that their separation creates in the narrative?  To what extent are Bloom and Stephen mirrors of one another?  To what extent are they opposites?
5. What do you make of how women are treated throughout the episode in Stephen’s theory about Shakespeare and in the conversation amongst the men?  How does this relate to the portrayal of women in the novel as a whole to this point?  Do you think the text is misogynist?  Why/why not?  Similarly, what about the portrayal of Jewishness in the text?  Is the text anti-Semitic?  Why/why not?