The third and final part of "Circe" begins with Stephen's dashing out of the bordello and with Bloom (temporarily purged of guilt) revealing a side of himself that we have seen before only once — at the end of "The Cyclops," when he talked back, defiantly, to the Citizen. Here, however, he does not run; instead, he stays and cares for Stephen, braving the soldiers and the police. He is truly angry with Bella for wanting ten shillings for the broken lamp, and he threatens her with revealing the fact that she is supporting her son at Oxford with money gained through prostitution; finally, he forces her to accept a shilling as payment for the damaged fixture. Also, it is Bloom who stays by Stephen when Lynch (a Judas figure) deserts the lad and when Corny Kelleher implies that Sandycove is too far to go to bring Stephen home.
Stephen's trouble with Carr is occasioned by his symbolic comment, "But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king." Carr thinks that Stephen is threatening to assassinate Edward VII; he will not listen to Bloom's entreaties that Stephen has been drinking absinthe. Actually, Stephen is repeating the adage that Ireland is a captive of the double tyrants of the Roman Catholic Church and Britain. More symbolism is also apparent in Carr's attack on Stephen just after Bloom has said that Stephen is "incapable": the blow represents, symbolically, English oppression of a nearly defenseless Ireland.
Despite the somber tone of part three of this chapter, however, the section is filled with many humorous overtones and subtle ironies — even apart from the delightfully farcical apparitions that follow upon Stephen's priest and king statement. Kelleher, for instance, brought to Nighttown someone who had lost on the Gold Cup race, and this person might possibly be Boylan. This would be an incredible irony, especially when seen against Molly's recollections of Blazes' sexual proclivities in "Penelope." And poor Bloom, despite all of his Good Samaritan doings, is misjudged (again): Kelleher thinks that Bloom has been visiting the prostitutes for his own uses: "Not for old stagers like myself and yourself."
"Circe" ends with a terrifying vision — the most terrifying vision of all the visions in this chapter, and Bloom, despite all that has happened to him in this episode, must suffer even more grief. His dead son Rudy appears to him as he would have been — had he lived, and although Bloom's image is an idealized one, it is terribly unnerving. It is, however, touchingly real and moving. We realize anew that Bloom is a marvelous composite of all the elements that make up mankind. His capacity for wonder and beauty is dramatically revealed here in the harrowing apparition of little Rudy, the Lamb of the World.
