Chapter 7: “Aeolus”

Time of day: Noon

Characters who appear or are mentioned:

Bloom

Red Murray: Joyce’s maternal uncle, John Murray, was nicknamed “Red.” He did, in fact, work in the accounts department of the Freeman’s Journal. Confusingly, though, Murray also provides the basis for the never seen, but sometimes mentioned, Uncle John Goulding, Richie’s brother

Davy Stephens: a real Dubliner, Stephens was a well-known news vendor

William Brayden: William Henry Brayden, a barrister, edited the Freeman from 1892 to 1916.

Joe Hynes: see ch.6 notes

Joseph Nannetti: Joseph Patrick Nannetti (1851-1915), Irish-born, Italian-descended foreman printer of the Freeman’s Journal, Dublin city councillor, member of Parliament from the College Green Division of Dublin

Monks: the leader, or “dayfather,” of the Freeman typesetters

Professor MacHugh: based on a Prof. Hugh MacNeill, who spent his days hanging around the Freeman offices

Ned Lambert: see ch.6 notes

Simon Dedalus

J.J. O’Molloy: a down-on-his-luck Dublin barrister; he suffers from incipient tuberculosis (thus his “hectic flush”) and is laden with gambling debts; he appears again in ch.12: “Cyclops” and ch.15: “Circe”

Wetherup: apparently this Wetherup was a friend of Joyce’s father when he worked in the taxation office; he is invoked again in ch.16: “Eumaeus”

Chris Callinan: a Dublin journalist, also mentioned in ch. 10: “Wandering Rocks.” He appears in ch.15: “Circe”

Myles Crawford: the tipsy, bird-like editor of the Evening Telegraph is fictional; based on several real-life Dubliners Joyce knew

Lenehan: Lenehan first appeared in “Two Gallants” (Dubliners). He is a witty sponger based on Mick Hart, a friend of Joyce’s father. He also appears in ch.10: “Wandering Rocks,” ch.11: “Sirens,” ch.12: “Cyclops,” ch.14: “Oxen of the Sun,” and ch.15: “Circe.” His real-life model, Mick Hart, is mentioned in ch.17: “Ithaca”

Paddy Hooper: a real Dublin newspaperman and the son of Alderman Hooper, mentioned elsewhere

Jack Hall: another real Dublin newspaperman of Joyce’s acquaintance

Stephen Dedalus

Mr O’Madden Burke: a Freeman’s Journal reviewer in “A Mother” (Dubliners), where he is described as “a suave, elderly man who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk umbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon which he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely respected.” He is based on O’Leary Curtis, a Dublin newspaperman Joyce knew

A.E. (aka George Russell): see ch.2 notes

Ignatius Gallaher: see ch.6 notes

Gumley: evidently a friend of Joyce’s father; at any rate, his sad fall from grace resembles John Joyce’s own financial decline. He appears, hard at work, in ch.16: “Eumaeus”

Skin-the-goat Fitzharris: one of the Phoenix Park murderers (see below). He may or may not appear in ch.16: Eumaeus”

Dick Adams: a Cork-born barrister who defended Skin-the-goat

Anne Kearns & Florence MacCabe: the “two Dublin vestals” in Stephen’s story, apparently meant to be the same two women he saw in ch.3: “Proteus”

Alexander Keyes: a real Dublin grocer

Points of Interest:

-- The “headlines” which punctuate the chapter

-- the preponderance of wind imagery (Homeric theme). Similarly, the abundance of rhetoric (human windiness).

-- the newspaper setting. Joyce knew the Dublin papers well: in his youth he had reviewed for the Daily Express, on a 1909 return visit he had hung out quite a bit at the Freeman’s Journal offices. John Joyce was himself an ad-canvasser there for a time and well-acquainted with the milieu

-- HOUSE OF KEY(E)S. Bloom is trying to secure a renewal from Alexander Keyes, a grocer. Keyes’ ad is to feature a reference to the House of Keys, the parliament of the Isle of Man. This carries “an innuendo of rule” inasmuch as the Isle of Man, unlike Ireland, retained a degree of home rule

-- Ireland/Israel/Greece as peoples of culture, as opposed to England/Egypt/Rome, as peoples of commerce and administration. This trinity allows Joyce to yoke together Bloom’s Jewishness, Irish home, and Homeric overtones. Bloom is the Irish Jew, Stephen the Irish Greek (“Your absurd name! An ancient Greek!”).

-- Stephen’s poem revisited (written on the beach in “Proteus”). Oddly (although the point is not made in Ulysses), the poem is pretty much lifted from one Irish poet Douglas Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht.

-- Pyrrhus (cf. opening of “Nestor”). The idea is that Pyrrhus was the last stand of Greece before Rome took over. Ireland, like Greece and Israel, is the home of “lost causes.”

-- the Phoenix Park Murders. In 1882 (though Joyce always says 1881 in Ulysses) an Irish nationalist group called the Invincibles murdered two high officials of the British colonial government in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. This watershed event comes up a number of times in Ulysses and one of the Invincibles, Skin-the-goat Fitzharris, may be a character in ch.16: “Eumaeus,” where the murders are discussed in detail.

-- Seymour Bushe’s speech: Bushe was a Dublin barrister who defended Samuel Childs, who was accused of murdering his brother in 1899. Joyce attended the trial and may have heard the speech alluded to here

-- John F. Taylor’s speech: Joyce also attended this lecture, which must have impressed him deeply. The speech stresses the Ireland/Israel, Egypt/England parallels. But note the irony that anti-semitism is rampant in Ulysses

-- Stephen’s “short story”: “A Pisgah Sight of Palestine.” This odd anecdote seems to be Joyce’s gnomic version of a prototype of one of his youthful Dubliners stories. The story has the same compressed, epiphanic style of Dubliners, but much, much stranger. Like many of the Dubliners stories, the point seems to be to illustrate the “paralysis” which Joyce viewed as endemic in Dublin life.