Bloom's plight forms half the episode's "matter"; the conversations of Stephen, Professor MacHugh, O'Madden Burke, Crawford, and the others make up the other half, and the two halves are viscerally connected: the principals in the newspaper office, while dismissing Bloom, worship the lifeless heroes of the past. The great irony of this windy chapter, "Aeolus," is that the true hope of Ireland, Bloom, a man of decency, understanding, and charity, is rejected, while the leaders of Dublin, a professor, a newspaper editor, etc., pursue chimeras.
The conversations in the newspaper office consist of three major topics: the ridicule of the speech which Dan Dawson made the night before; effulgent praise of the mythic reporter Ignatius Gallaher, who 'broke" the story of the Phoenix Park murders of 1882 to a New York paper; and the deep respect for a patriotic speech made by John F. Taylor, the orator, in 1901.
The ample quotations from the Dawson speech in "Aeolus," justly parodied by Simon Dedalus and Ned Lambert, show the triteness of Dawson's attitude towards the emerald isle. The speech's many cliched adjectives resemble the descriptive phrases of those who think of Ireland in terms of purling rills and smiling leprechauns. Dawson's speech occludes Ireland's problems as effectively as Haines's shrugging gesture and comment that the land's troubles are the fault of "history." There is irony, though, in the inability of Dedalus and Lambert to see the hackneyed element in themselves, even as they criticize the superficiality of another.
The discussants' bungling of facts about the Phoenix Park murders reveals Joyce's derisive attitude towards those who live in the past. The murders of two high officials whom a segment of the Fenians (the Invincibles) felt were repressing the Irish (they were), took place on May 6, 1882, near the Viceregal Lodge, in Phoenix Park, Dublin. Gallaher, who worked for the Freeman, answered the request, of the New York World for news about the killings by referring the publishers to an advertisement in the Weekly Freeman of March 17. By explaining a code in an ad of that day, Gallaher was able to provide details of the assassins' route on May 6. Joyce may be implying that the legendary reporter actually knew of the plans for the assassinations before they took place, even though the whole story is, of course, apocryphal.
