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We continue to get a picture of life inside the tower, with Mulligan as the obstreperous bully and Stephen as the passive brooder. Mulligan’s penchant for satirizing the mass continues, as he doles out the eggs with the ol’ Signum Crucis. But we can also map the father/son/holy ghost backwards-like onto the three men themselves, with Mulligan as the usurper who would be the father, Stephen as the son without a father, and Haines as the holy ghost who is neither.
Stephen’s suggestion of tea with lemon, as opposed to milk, is condemned by Mulligan as a “Paris fad.” So we gather another fragment about Stephen, and will soon learn more about his time in Paris. Stephen’s time abroad is a conneciton back to Joyce, who in real life went to Paris after graduating from college, only to return to be at his mother’s deathbed. It also recalls Hamlet, who is back in Denmark after happier times spent in Wittenberg.