This episode takes place in Dublin's National Library from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. In this intricate chapter, Stephen further explicates his theory about Shakespeare and Hamlet that Mulligan asked him to explain to Haines in "Telemachus." Stephen's brilliant but difficult exposition is made even more perplexing by the fact that he himself does not truly believe all of his own theories about Shakespeare — or even about Hamlet; in his own words, his arguments to the men in the library are a "performance." Thus, while the chapter does not tell us a great deal about Shakespeare's personal life (despite the many interesting points about the playwright that it does raise), it tells us very much about Stephen himself, particularly his obsession with paternity; this episode explicitly deals with the father-son theme of the novel: at the conclusion of the chapter, for example, Bloom walks between Stephen and Mulligan as the two young men are about to walk down the library steps; he forces them, symbolically, to separate. This act, besides foreshadowing other sunderings in Ulysses, links the older Bloom with youth, and with Stephen in particular.
In Homer's epic, Odysseus was forced to pass between the six-headed monster, Scylla, and the whirlpool, Charybdis. Following the advice of Athena, he hugged the mountain lair of Scylla; Charybdis, he had been told, promised certain disaster, and he sacrificed one of his men for each of Scylla's maws. In Ulysses, the whirlpool is represented mainly by the poet A. E. (George Russell), an exponent of mysticism, Platonism, and emotive Irish nationalism. Stephen is, as it were, Scylla, constantly snapping at the arguments of his opponents; he is possessed of a sharp, cutting, Aristotelian mind and is, as Mulligan called him earlier in jest, Kinch, the knifeblade.
