The parallel with Homer, here, is broad, but is very important in this episode. Odysseus's men, despite his warnings, slaughtered the cattle of the sun god, Helios, and thus brought death upon themselves, leaving Odysseus as the only survivor of the voyage from Troy. In Joyce, the "slaughter" is apparent on several levels. Literally, the Homeric parallel is with the Kerry cows; they are suffering from foot and mouth disease (the Deasy letter appeared in the paper this evening — because of Stephen's influence), and these cows might well be slaughtered in Liverpool. Of much greater concern than the slaughter of these cattle, however, is the whole matter of birth and death, life and its prevention. Joyce was somewhat conservative regarding matters of birth control, and he was dubious about anything that might prevent the issuance of new life.
As a result, Joyce saw in the "sterile" talk of Stephen and his friends that sterility itself was an analogy for human impotence in general — that is, the profitless nature of man's questioning the divinity, as well as the question about the decay of Ireland, etc. Mulligan, as was demonstrated in "Telemachus" and also in "Scylla and Charybdis," again becomes the "villain" of the piece; he is the major spokesman for narcissistic, profitless sex. Here, he enters and hands out cards announcing his new trade: Mr. Malachi Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator, Lambay Island. His "mythic" plans are really about sex, and though they are supposedly about fertility, the announcement of his idea is followed by a page of puns about contraceptives, with cloaks and umbrellas heading the list. Joyce's characterization of Mulligan is stern; nor does Bloom escape unscathed: For all of his charitable nurturing, Bloom has just spilled his seed in the preceding episode, and we are reminded that a "habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life." Also, Bloom's first sexual encounter, with Bridie Kelly (St. Brigid, symbolically and ironically, is the Irish patroness of purity), was anything but fruitful, even when its sterility is considered in sentimental, 19thcentury terms: "She [Bridie] dare not bear the sunny golden babe of day." Joyce's positive attitude about birth and life is clearly evident in the design of "The Oxen of the Sun": the nine months of gestation are marked (loosely) by the so-called nine "periods" (or stages, phases of development) of the English language, through which the plot and themes of this chapter are presented. Scholars have with some justification criticized Joyce's elaborate architectonics in this chapter, but if we consider the serious purpose which underlies Joyce's parodies, the chapter becomes much easier to comprehend. The true protagonist in "The Oxen of the Sun" is the birth process itself; in this case, Joyce focuses, along with his literal subject matter, on a matter of major concern to him: the birth of the English language. He demonstrates here (and in Finnegans Wake) just how fruitful the insemination has proved to be.
