Although Bloom thinks that the Irish lad in the ballad must have been a bit thick not to have seen, even in a darkened setting, that he was talking to an English captain, he is moved by the fact that the boy is the last of his race: "I too, last my race. . . . No son. Rudy," Bloom says later in the chapter. Resembling the farm boy, Bloom leaves "unblessed" from the Ormond. In addition, "The Croppy Boy," with its fictitious Father Green, suggests in a physical, a political, and in a moral sense the "false father" theme of the novel. The croppy boy, as noted, is a surrogate of Stephen Dedalus, who also "forgot" — in a sense, however, Stephen cannot forget that he refused — to pray for a dead mother; Stephen will also be temporarily "adopted" by a father, Bloom, in this novel's last chapters. Finally, the singing of the ballad, which deals with betrayal, corresponds with Boylan's entrance into Bloom's home. The cuckolding of Bloom also suggests Peter's betrayal of Christ, as Boylan's cocksureness is literally and metaphorically recorded at the crucial moment of sexual conquest: "Cockcarracarra."
Bloom's movements, as they often do in Ulysses, suggest his loneliness, his isolation, and his tragic-comic situation — a situation whose sometimes pathetic depths are assuaged by Bloom's balance and common sense. Bloom passes by the Ormond Hotel carrying Sweets of Sin under his arm, and Lydia Douce, inside the hotel, cries: "O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that. . . . "(Since the word "greasy" is pronounced "grace-y" in Dublin, Bloom is, vocally, paralleled here as a Christ figure.) After buying stationery at Daly's to write to Martha Clifford (continuing a hollow relationship), Bloom, just after seeing a poster with a mermaid on it (another Homeric parallel), observes Boylan for the third time in the novel. But afraid to act and afraid not to act, Bloom follows Boylan into the Ormond, where he observes him without being seen.
