The reading group has been split into two halves.
The first half gathered on Oct 6, the second on Oct 13. Both stopped their reading at: “Wisdom Hely's” (6.969).
Summary (upto 6.969):
Episode 6, named Hades, describes Mr Bloom traveling in a creaking carriage to the Prospect Cemetery to attend the funeral of Paddy Dignam. Martin Cunningham, Jack Power and Simon Dedalus are also in the carriage. Joyce develops on the first couple of pages of the episode the characters of these people. Bloom is an outsider in this group. Whenever he tries to say something - which is not often -, his words are mostly ignored by the others. The carriage drives from one end of Dublin to the other, past many well known places, monuments and statues. When it halts at the gates of the cemetery, Bloom and the rest descend and follow other mourners including Dignam's wife and daughter, first to the mortuary chapel where a service is held and later to the burial spot.
During the burial and afterwards, Bloom's imagination runs riot with various thoughts relating to life and death. For instance, when after the service at the chapel, Tom Kernan says, comparing that service to the one in the Irish church, "I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart"(6.670), Bloom replies, "It does" (6.671), but thinks that no touching the heart of the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies (6.672). For, the heart is a pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are (6.674). After the ceremony when Bloom and others walk through the cemetery, the sight of the saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, . . . (6.928) makes him think that it would be more sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living (6.930). He wonders at all those dead, musing all these here once walked round Dublin (6.960), thinking of how to remember everybody.
(Summarized from the book, Ulysses for the Uninitiated.)
