Summary ending episode 8:
Mr Bloom leaves Davy Byrne’s and walks down Duke Street towards Dawson street, wandering, wondering about many things. For instance, for some reason not apparent, he thinks of the last scenes of the opera, Don Giovanni when the Il Commendatore’s statue visits Don Giovanni. He dreams about how much money he could make if he gets ads from Keyes, Prescott's, . . . what all he could do with that money. Still he does not want to think of one thing. Today. Today. Not think (8.1063). He does not want to think of what is about to happen that day.
Walking on he sees an young, blind man tapping the curbstone (8.1075). Bloom, ever sympathetic, wants to help him and asks him, whether he wants to cross the street. He touches the young man's elbow gently, then takes the limp seeing hand to guide it forward (8.1090) (The cane that the blind person carries in his hand makes his hand a seeing hand.) Wanting to start a conversation but not wanting to seem to be condescending, Bloom makes a remark about the weather, but gets no response.
After being helped by Bloom to cross the street, the young man goes on his way. Bloom continues to think of him. Terrible. Really terrible. . . Where is the justice being born that way? (8.1144) That thought reminds Bloom of the news of the tragedy he had read that day. (The Freeman's Journal, 16 June 1904, carried the story on page 5: Appalling American Disaster. . . . Five hundred persons, mostly children, perished today by the burning of the steamer General Slocum, near Hell Gate, on the East River . . . ; Gifford, 8.1146-47). Where is justice in such things? Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life (8.1147). The thought of Karma brings back to his mind Molly asking him that morning the meaning of the word metempsychosis, a word she had pronounced as met him pike hoses.
Molly and Boylan continue to occupy Bloom's thoughts. Before Bloom had taken the elbow of the young stripling to help him cross the road, he had passed Drago's (a Parisian perfumer and hairdresser) on Dawson street, and recalls now seeing his brilliantined hair that morning. (Though haunted whole day by memories of Boylan, Bloom does not name him on these pages.) He sees Boylan once again, as he (Bloom) reaches Kildare street. He wants first to go to the National Library, which is to his left, to check up the design for the advertisement and later to the National Museum to check up on the goddesses. But as he catches the sight of the straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers (8.1168), Bloom gets very flustered, very agitated. He turns therefore to the right, and goes to the National Museum instead. Feigning as if he is preoccupied, Bloom fumbles in his pocket, taking out things he had stowed there. Even in his agitated state he notices and appreciates the cream curves of the stone of the National Museum. By the time his hand finds the soap in his pocket, Bloom reaches the gates of the museum.
He is Safe!
(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)
