The fourth chapter of Ulysses begins at 8:00 a.m. with Leopold Bloom making breakfast in the kitchen of the Blooms' home at 7 Eccles Street. Bloom feeds the cat some milk, walks to Dlugacz's butcher shop to buy a kidney for his breakfast, and feels depressed as a cloud covers the sun. He returns home, where he brings in the morning mail (containing a letter from Boylan) to Molly, who is still in bed; he eats his breakfast, then brings Molly's breakfast to her (she is still in bed); Bloom hears church bells and thinks of the funeral for Paddy Dignam, which he must attend. The motif of food in the episode suggests a strong parallel between Bloom of "Calypso" and Stephen of "Telemachus," the two episodes taking place at the same time.
This chapter also parallels the Odyssey in that just as Odysseus (Ulysses) was held as a love captive for seven years by the beautiful nymph Calypso, so also is Bloom, in a sense, a prisoner of his wife, Molly. Bloom, however, seems to be a more willing captive than his Greek prototype, and even in his first appearance in the novel, Bloom's bondage is tinged with hints of masochism.
Other evocations of Homer in this chapter include the picture the Bath of the Nymph, which Molly has said would look nice hanging over the bed, and Molly's answer to Bloom's definition of metempsychosis as being "the transmigration of souls": "O rocks!" Her retort suggests a mermaid whose shoals mariners (both Greek and Irish) might do well to avoid. In addition, it was believed by some Irish Renaissance popularizers, such as George Sigerson, that Calypso's island, Ogygia, was really Ireland. Although Joyce did not accept this view, he was aware that Gibraltar, Molly's birthplace, was one of the locations that Homer probably used to form his composite of Ogygia.
Bloom is one of the most completely developed characters in literature, and in "Calypso," Joyce begins his characterization of his protagonist by sketching many parallels between Stephen (whom we have just met) and Bloom, beginning with the fact that both men leave on their individual odysseys at 8:45 a.m.
