The episode begins at noon in the newspaper offices of the Weekly Freeman and National Press and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. The sprawling building also houses the Evening Telegraph, all of the above papers being under common ownership. After the burial of Dignam, the funeral coaches have taken the mourners to the center of Dublin, and Bloom has gone directly to the printing works of the combined newspapers in connection with the advertisement for Alexander Keyes.
The episode corresponds with the Odyssey in two main respects. In Homer's epic, Aeolus, the custodian of the winds, gave Odysseus a great boon: all adverse winds, which could hamper his return to Ithaca, were sealed tightly in a leather bag. Within sight of home, Odysseus's men, out of curiosity and greed, opened the bag as their leader dozed, and both the crew and the commander were blown back, off their course. In Ulysses, the newspaper headlines, reproduced in large type, parody the often windy, empty journalism that makes up the daily news. And Bloom, within sight of "home" — that is, successfully negotiating the Keyes advertisement — is foiled in his attempt by the demanding Keyes and by the irritation of Bloom's own boss, Myles Crawford, the editor.
Bloom's movements in "Aeolus," form, as it were, a mini-odyssey by themselves, and they must be carefully traced. At the beginning of the episode, it seems that Bloom will have no trouble with the Keyes advertisement. Red Murray cuts out a past version of it and tells Bloom, who is to take the snipped-out square to the Telegraph wing of the building, that the Freeman's Journal will indeed run a paragraph (gratis), calling attention to Keyes's establishment.
