This chapter begins just before 5:00 p.m. and takes place in Barney Kiernan's pub, to which Bloom has come to meet with Martin Cunningham so that the two men can proceed on to Paddy Dignam's residence in Sandymount in order to discuss the deceased man's life insurance policy with the bereaved family. The chapter ends with Bloom, Cunningham, Jack Power, and the Orangeman, Mr. Crofton (in Cunningham's carriage) escaping from the Citizen-cyclops. The Citizen-cyclops of Kiernan's pub is modeled upon the ardent Irish nationalist Michael Cusack, who sought to revive Gaelic sports in Ireland as a reaction against England, and Kiernan's pub becomes, metaphorically, the Homeric cave in which Odysseus and his men were imprisoned by the cannibalistic giant cyclops of Greek myth.
Other parallels with the Odyssey are quite explicit and determine several of this episode's motifs. In Homer's epic, the cyclops, Polyphemus, who devoured some of Odysseus's men, was, of course, one-eyed. He was also an anarchist, as were the other cyclopes in Homer's legendary country. Odysseus escaped the cyclops by getting him drunk on wine; after the monster had fallen into a deep slumber, Odysseus blinded him with a fiery stake. Odysseus and his remaining men then left the cave by latching onto the undersides of the cyclops' sheep. Since Odysseus had told Polyphemus that his name was No-Man, the giant received only ridicule from his cohorts when they asked the blinded hulk who had gored out his eye. They reasoned that because "no man" had done the deed, then the gods must be punishing Polyphemus; for that reason, they left him to an uncertain fate. As he departed from the country of the cyclopes, Odysseus made the mistake of taunting the blind cyclops, who hurled a large rock at the departing voyagers. He missed Odysseus and his men, but Polyphemus asked his father, Poseidon, to curse the crew, and because Poseidon was the god of the seas, Odysseus was forced to wander for many extra years before he finally returned to Ithaca.
