Episode 15 — Circe

Midnight, the brothel district known to the novel as "nighttown" — the streets off Mecklenburgh Street. The chapter is unlike anything else in the book. It is staged entirely as a play, with character names in capitals and italicized stage directions, and the events shift without warning between literal reality and hallucination. Stephen and Lynch, drunk, have stumbled into Bella Cohen's house. Bloom, following at a distance to keep an eye on Stephen, comes in.

The hallucinations are mostly Bloom's. Every shame and fantasy he has ever brushed against erupts into theatrical life. He is put on trial for his correspondence with Martha; he is hailed as a messianic king ("Bloomusalem") and then violently deposed; he sees his dead father, his dead mother, his daughter Milly. Bella Cohen becomes the masculine "Bello" and dominates him in a long set-piece of humiliation. Then he recovers. Near the end, in a moment of unbearable tenderness, his dead infant son Rudy briefly appears, eleven years old as he would have been, reading a Hebrew book. Bloom holds out a hand. Rudy does not see him.

Stephen has been having hallucinations of his own. His dead mother rises through the floor in her grave-clothes and asks him to repent. Stephen, terrified, refuses. "Non serviam!" he cries — Lucifer's line — and smashes the chandelier above the piano with his ashplant. Bella screams; Bloom pays her off and gets Stephen out into the street. There Stephen, staggering, is accosted by Privates Carr and Compton, who think he has insulted their king. Carr knocks him down. Bloom shoulders his way through the crowd, pays off the police, and helps Stephen to his feet. The episode ends with Bloom standing over the dazed Stephen, deciding to take him for coffee.