B-LOU-msday: 14 Oxen Of The Sun - a chapter synopsis in under 10m

Part fourteen of a series of short synopses of the Chapters of Ulysses, with some odds and ends that occur to me thinking on the chapter.
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EPISODE 14. Oxen Of The Sun
TIME - 10pm
SCENE - Hospital - Holles Street Maternity Hospital, before adjourning to Burke’s, and then on further into the night.
COLOUR - White
TECHNIQUE - Embryonic Development
CORRESPONDENCES -
Hospital - Trinacria
Nurses - Lampetie
Phaesthusa / Horne - Helios
Fertility - Oxen
Fraud / Crime - Jove
Ulysses
SCIENCE / ART - Medicine
MEANING - The Eternal Flocks
ORGAN - Matrix / Uterus
SYMBOLS - Fecundation, Frauds, Mothers
OTHER CHARACTERS - Mrs Purefoy, Dedalus, Mulligan, Lenehan, Haines, Lynch
PLOT - Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.
Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.
A child is born, and there is rejoicing - Mina Purefoy is no longer weighed down by it after three days of labor. Bloom has come to see about Mrs. Purefoy’s well being - that distracted chat with Mrs. Breen earlier has stayed with him all day. Nearby, and utterly inconsiderately, a bunch of young men mostly medical students, including Dedalus, are drinking. Already Dedalus is past the point of no return on the alcohol front. Bloom’s chivalrously decides, thinking of his friendship with Simon (another inveterate drinker), that it might be wise to keep by him. They go to the pub, where Dedalus buys Absinth for all, and his consumption of it doesn’t help matters of sobriety, but he does become less dour. Bannon arrives, who speaks of a dalliance with Milly in Mullingar to Mulligan his companion. The party breaks up, with Mulligan set to travel back to Sandycove with Haines, and the extremely drunken Stephen joins Lynch heading off to find a late night entertainment, to euphemise
ODDS & ENDS
For me this has been the hardest to summarise - the story doesn’t yield easily, even if it is a short enough chapter in terms of action. Rather this is a chapter to read for the enjoyment of the language. If previously we have examined storytelling, this chapter is about the birth of word themselves. We go on a merry wander through all manner of ways of speaking, and as Stephen gets drunker, the language gets more flamboyant. There are sections here, like Finnegan’s Wake to follow, that are more suited to reading aloud than in the head, that make more sense spoken than ever thought. Bloom steps up greatly in this one. He is ultimately a flawed good man, by any standards, but with Love as his guide, he is definitely a good one. He calls to the hospital because of a mention of Mrs. Purefoy’s problems earlier in the day, and stays because of a sense of responsibility to his friend on seeing his son in a bad way. Mr. Purefoy, and Simon Dedalus are both absent in the respective difficulties of their wife and son, and Bloom, the egg pushed out of the cuckoos nest, slips in - is it a sense of supplanting the rightful man? Joyce generally works hard to ensure that Bloom isn’t deified, so perhaps it is an element here. However, we are reminded a couple of times that Bloom has no son and no father, possibly most painfully in this: No, Leopold. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee - and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
Selected Sources
Ulysses, by James Joyce
Romping Through Ulysses, from At It Again
www.ulyssesguide.com
www.joyceproject.com
Music in this video
Song: Love's Old Sweet Song
Artist: John McCormack
Album: The Legendary John McCormack
Licensed to KZbin by: INgrooves (on behalf of Emerald); EMI Music Publishing, Public Domain Compositions, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, and 1 Music Rights Societies

[@ariadnasetentaytres2686]

Thank you. It helps with my homework :-)

[@martinfrench4890]

Glad it was of some help!