Continuing on from the previous episode, we follow Leopold Bloom around Westland Row station. The time is 10am and he is on his way to the post office to collect a letter. He notices in a shop window, tea label that describe faraway countries. Bloom imagines what it must be like to live in 'the garden of the world' (p.69). When he arrives at the post office he finds a letter from his erotic penpal, Martha Clifford addressed to his pseudonym, Henry Flower. As he leaves the post office, he attempts to read the letter when he is approached by a friend called McCoy. They talk about Paddy Dignam's funeral which is due to take place at 11am, McCoy states that he will not be able to attend. Bloom notices a woman's leg in the background and thinks of his wife's bad singing abilities.
After being lost in thought about his father's death, Bloom decides to read the letter. He then arrives at the church for Dignam's funeral. It is here where the chapter's most profound imagery occurs, Bloom sees Latin church services as a 'stupefying' thing, similar to the narcotic effect of the lotus that features in Homer's Odyssey. Bloom continues with his blasphemous metaphor, likening the consumption of bread and wine that symbolize Christ's body and blood to an act of cannibalism: 'Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton on to it.' (p.77). This puts into perspective both the humour and ideology of Leopold Bloom, throughout the novel he is continually questioning ritual and metaphor as well as reducing the divine to the banal.
After the service, Bloom visits a chemist to buy a lotion for Molly. As he browses the store he thinks of medicines and disease and concludes 'poisons the only cures' (p.81). Bloom picks up a bar of lemon soap offering to return later to pay for the lotion as well. Bloom then meets Bantam Lyons and inadvertently offers him a tip for a horse race. He then walks towards a public baths and imagines his naked body floating in the water like a flower.
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