Episode I: Telemachus

Well, dear reader, here we go. I'm cribbing episode titles from the Ulysses wikipedia page, which is a rather informative article all around. We begin at 8 AM in Dublin, on Thursday, June 16, 1904.

Stephen Dedalus is a young writer renting a "martello tower," with his friend Buck Mulligan and an Englishman whom he does not know, Haines. Mulligan is at the very least irreverent, parodying the Catholic mass upon waking up and driving the gloomy Stephen to distraction with his antics. It soon emerges that Stephen is tormented by the recent death of his mother, though he refused to kneel down and pray for her as she lay dying. Mulligan inadvertently insulted him soon afterwards, and refuses to take Stephen seriously when he tries to explain how unhappy that made him feel. Stephen also has a gaff with Haines, who apparently suffers nightmares about a black panther which keep Stephen awake.

The three men descend to breakfast, and Mulligan continues to treat Stephen as he would a servant, demanding money from him and the tower's key. It emerges that Stephen has a job teaching, and will be collecting his pay later that morning. A woman enters with milk, and Haines tries to speak with her in Gaelic, but she doesn't understand him. She fawns over Mulligan, who turns out to be a medical student, but snubs Stephen. THe three men pay a part of their debt to her and leave, planning to meet up later in the day for drinks. Stephen resolves not to return to the tower that night, as Mulligan has usurped his place in it.

Stephen has been tormented throughout the episode by the image of his mother, particularly in one memorable scene when she appears to him in her graveclothes and seems to find him wanting. This scene struck a chord with me, being vividly written and oppressive from Stephen's internal point of view. Similarly, Mulligan's treatment of his "friend" was uncomfortable, particularly his callousness and refusal to understand why Stephen might have felt insulted by his behavior. Haines emerges as a relatively mild anti-Semite, especially when compared with Mr. Deasy in the next episode.

This chapter is relatively straight-forward, the biggest challenge in reading it for me was realizing what was internal stream of consciousness and what was dialog. Reading it in Braille helps quite a bit with this, as does reading it aloud. As shall be seen, there's more complicated stuff to come.