This episode takes place at around 8:00 p.m. on Sandymount Strand, the same shore where Stephen had earlier that morning contemplated the meaning of life's changes in "Proteus." Bloom has just come from visiting the Dignam family (in Sandymount), and "Nausicaa" provides him with a "relief" from the unpleasantness of Barney Kiernan's pub in "The Cyclops," and it also furnishes him respite from the somber atmosphere of the bereaved Dignam household. Joyce gains continuity with the previous episode, "The Cyclops," despite the time differential by continuing several motifs from that chapter, the most prominent of which is the arc. The rising and falling of the biscuit tin that was flung by the Citizen is reflected in the various ascents and declines in "Nausicaa!': for example, Gerty MacDowell's tempting leg, the Roman candle's rise and climactic explosion from the Mirus Bazaar, and the swinging censer of the church benediction — all of these risings and fallings lead up to and down from the simultaneous orgasms of Gerty and Bloom. Also, the form of the episode is as simple as its style (Joyce called it — perhaps knowingly — a "marmalady" style, a sticky style). The first part of the episode deals with Gerty; the second, with Bloom and his ruminations.
Parallels with Homer are not difficult to recognize. Odysseus, washed ashore on the land of the Phaeacians, was awakened from sleep when he was struck by a ball misthrown by Princess Nausicaa and her friends; the resourceful and beautiful young girl had come to the shore to play and wash some clothing. Not nonplussed by the appearance of a naked stranger, Nausicaa told the hapless, storm-tossed wanderer to go to her father's palace to receive succor. Gerty (Joyce's Nausicaa) aids Ulysses-Bloom by enticing him into the sexual respite provided by auto-eroticism, an act which he has been postponing until now. She also parallels the unmarried Nausicaa of Homer because marriage is much on Gerty's mind, especially after her breakup with her steady boyfriend, Reggie Wylie (a parallel here with Bloom's "loss" of Molly). In addition, Nausicaa in Homer's epic performed the menial task of washing her family's linens; Joyce's heroine, however, causes Bloom to (ironically) "dirty" his clothes by masturbating. Gerty is also compared to the Blessed Mother, and Mary's colors, especially blue, appear throughout the episode. Mary, of course, is the Catholics' Refuge of Sinners and, to them, a last resort for bewildered and perplexed mankind — in this instance, Bloom.
