The deepening sense of gloom, the feeling that things are not all right at Kiernan's, is increased by the ensuing conversation, Alf does not know that Paddy Dignam is dead: "Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago . . . as plain as a pikestaff" (another long, thin, phallic image); similarly, Bob Doran's judgment that Christ must be a "ruffian" to take poor "Willy" Dignam draws an admonition from the barman Terry, who will not tolerate blasphemy in the pub. Doran, too, is a menacing character. He was tricked into marriage in Joyce's short story "The Boarding House" (in Dubliners), and he is now on his yearly drinking binge. As a final touch, Joyce inserts Hynes's description of a letter of application for the position of hangman from H. Rumbold; with its gory implications, it does little to assuage the depressing atmosphere of the pub; instead, it emphasizes anew the sense of despair, depression, and futility.
Bloom enters the pub, as we might expect, at the wrong time, and the rest of the episode is structured upon one essential contrast: the violence of the pub participants set against the temperate attitude of Bloom, an attitude which is starkly out of place in this dark, cyclopian cavern. Bloom's entrance establishes him here again as a Christ-like figure, and, through Joyce's careful choice of details, this sequence foreshadows Bloom's role at the end of the chapter as a kind of modern Elijah, a prophet unappreciated by his "people." When Bloom enters Kiernan's, he keeps his "cod's eye on the dog [Garryowen]." The Joycean equation of "dog' and "God" (spelled backwards) is underscored by Hynes's exclamation, "O Christ . . ." — although he is referring here to Rumbold's letter and not to Bloom, but he utters it just as Bloom "slopes in." Bloom twice refuses drinks, but he does accept the offer of a cigar (here is another parallel allusion to Odysseus's stake), and Bloom earns the name "prudent member" because of his abstemiousness.
