Meet Mr. Leopold Bloom

After three episodes of Stephen Dedalus, Philip Kitcher turns to the principal figure of the novel, Leopold Bloom. Where Stephen theorized about how he sees, Bloom feels the air, smells the food, and listens to his cat three times over. Kitcher walks through the morning: breakfast for Molly Bloom, the pork kidney from the butcher's, and the moment on the walk back when Bloom's thoughts shift from fragments into whole literary sentences, which Kitcher reads as images and sounds rendered in words.

Then the centerpiece of the chapter, the letters on the doormat. One is addressed to Mrs. Marion Bloom in the bold hand of Blazes Boylan, who is coming over that afternoon, and Kitcher explains why that will trouble Bloom all day. He follows Bloom out to the privy for what he calls his version of the heroic gesture, then into episode five: the post office, the letter from Martha Clifford, the church, and the bath before the funeral.