The reading stopped at "... inevitable, irreparable." (17.2194)
Summary:
From reminiscences of his father, Bloom's thoughts move on to a consideration of departing from Dublin and moving elsewhere, and then to thinking of forces that would render departure undesirable . . . He thinks of everything that had happened to him - albeit in reverse order -that day. But Ulysses would not have been Ulysses if Joyce had resisted the temptation of adding a rich layer to these seemingly banal events. Adding words in parentheses to the events of the day, Joyce transforms the day into a quasi-schematic Jewish liturgical calendar.
Finally Bloom enters the bedroom where his attention is immediately caught by new clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male not his, . . . This observation leads to a long list of Molly's admirers, potential occupants of her bed, starting with Mulvey, whom she had known in Gibraltar, and ending with Boylan, who had occupied her bed that very afternoon. Bloom feels envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity at the thought of his having been the last occupant of the bed.
The paragraph that describes why/how Bloom feels equanimity is for me one of the most wonderful paragraphs of the novel. These reflections/descriptions elevate Bloom (the eternal outsider, the person who in many ways is quite naive, the one to whom people hardly listen to, the one who truly cares not only for Stephen but also for a Mrs. Purefoy in labour, the one who cares more for science than for nationalism, . . .) to a special level, differentiating him from ordinary mortals! The adultery Molly commits with Boylan is for Bloom an act that is very natural, that is more than inevitable. He reflects on various kinds of crimes that one could commit, that are more heinous than adultery in the world.
(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)
