The Cracked Looking Glass

Illustrating The Works Of James Joyce One Page At A Time

For A Complete List Of Ulysses Episodes

The Latest Drawing

Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care what man looks. All to see. Never speaking.

Episode 1: Telemachus

The first Episode in Ulysses begins at the Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin. The scene involves 4 characters, Buck Mulligan, Stephen Dedalus, and Hainse, three young men who are staying in the tower, and a milkmaid who is delivering milk to them. The episode explores themes of death, Dedalus’s relationship to the Catholic Church, and the relationship of the country of Ireland with its people.

Episode 2: Nestor

Episode 2 takes place at Garrett Deasy’s school where Stephen is a teacher. Stephen is teaching a class in which one of the students is struggling. Stephen contemplates the relationship between the boy and his mother. In this episode, multiple parallels are drawn between Deasy and the character Nestor from the Odesey. 

Episode 3: Proteus

In Episode 3 we find Stephen on Sandymount Strand contemplating both a visit to the home of his aunt and uncle, and the question of what is real and what is imagined. He contemplates the complicated relationship between his father and his uncle, and the “Ineluctable modality of the visible”.