Buck Mulligan mocks Stephen Dedalus about his dead mother while they stand together on the Martello Tower roof.

Mulligan demands Stephen's tower key and beer money, prompting Stephen to privately vow never to return.

Leopold Bloom prepares a kidney breakfast and carries it upstairs to his wife Molly in bed.

Molly reads a letter from her secret lover Blazes Boylan while lying in bed.

Bloom rides to Paddy Dignam's funeral in a carriage alongside Simon Dedalus and two companions.

The funeral carriage passengers spot Blazes Boylan on the street, leaving Bloom flustered and unable to speak.

Bloom visits the Freeman's Journal newspaper offices to negotiate placing an advertisement for a local business client.

Stephen lectures a small group at the National Library on his theory about Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Bloom spots Boylan near the National Museum and panics, rushing inside the building to avoid being seen.

Bloom eats dinner at the Ormond Hotel bar while watching Boylan depart to meet Molly for their affair.

An antisemitic nationalist known only as the citizen verbally berates Bloom in a pub and drives him out.

Bloom masturbates on Sandymount beach while watching Gerty MacDowell display her legs during a fireworks display.

Bloom and Stephen properly meet for the first time while waiting together at the maternity hospital.

Stephen smashes a brothel chandelier and flees; a British soldier punches Stephen unconscious in the street outside.

Bloom and Stephen drink cocoa at Bloom's home and talk before Stephen declines a bed and vanishes into the night.

Ulysses follows two men through Dublin on a single June day. Stephen Dedalus, a grieving and restless young teacher, is driven from his home by his housemate Mulligan and spends the day wandering the city. Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged ad canvasser haunted by his wife's affair, moves through Dublin attending a funeral, chasing business leads, and trying to outrun his anxieties. The two men circle each other throughout the day before finally meeting at a maternity hospital, after which Bloom follows Stephen to a brothel and tends to him after a fight. Their night ends with a quiet conversation over cocoa at Bloom's house, before Stephen disappears into the dark and Bloom climbs into bed beside Molly.

The headline events of a single day in Dublin.

Stephen teaches a history class about Pyrrhus and then gives a private algebra lesson to student Cyril Sargent.

Stephen collects his wages from headmaster Deasy, who makes antisemitic remarks and hands over a letter to publish.

Stephen walks along Sandymount beach, composing a poem and writing lines on a torn scrap of Deasy's letter.

Bloom collects a letter from his anonymous correspondent Martha Clifford at the post office under a false name.

Bloom enters a church service as an outsider, observing the congregation while unable to participate in communion.

Bloom visits Sweny's chemist to collect face lotion for Molly and purchases a bar of lemon soap.

Bloom passes Stephen Dedalus in the Freeman's Journal offices but the two men do not speak to each other.

Stephen delivers Deasy's letter about foot and mouth disease to newspaper editor Crawford, who agrees to publish it.

Bloom eats a light meal at the Davy Byrnes pub after the crude patrons of the Burton restaurant disgust him.

Bloom helps a visually impaired man cross a busy road and then spots Boylan on the opposite side of the street.

Buck Mulligan bursts into the National Library and interrupts Stephen's Hamlet lecture with a sardonic clap.

Dilly Dedalus confronts her father Simon at an auction house and begs him for money to buy food.

Stephen finds his impoverished sister Dilly at a book stall, where she has bought a French learning book.

Mrs. Purefoy successfully gives birth to a son after spending three days in labor at the maternity hospital.

Bloom takes the dazed Stephen to a cab stand operated by a man connected to the Phoenix Park Murders.

While the main plot traces the broadest arc of the day, a rich layer of secondary events fills in the texture of life in Dublin. Stephen's morning unfolds through a dispiriting school day and a solitary walk on the beach, where he composes poetry and wrestles with his grief. Bloom moves through the city on a series of small errands, visiting a post office, a church, and a chemist, while attempting to conduct business at a newspaper office where he and Stephen narrowly miss each other. The afternoon brings Bloom to a pub for a modest meal, while Stephen's estranged family struggles in the background, glimpsed in two painful encounters involving his impoverished sister Dilly. By evening, the birth of Mrs. Purefoy's son at the maternity hospital draws the day's scattered threads together, and Bloom shepherds the wounded Stephen to a late-night cab stand to recover.

The supporting moments that shape Stephen and Bloom's long day.

Headmaster Deasy chases Stephen down the road to deliver one final antisemitic joke as Stephen departs the school.

Bantam Lyons misinterprets Bloom's offhand remark about discarding his newspaper as an insider tip on a racehorse named Throwaway.

Riding to Dignam's funeral, Bloom silently reflects on his infant son Rudy's death and his father's suicide.

Bloom notices an unidentified stranger in a macintosh coat who appears mysteriously at Dignam's graveside.

Bloom reads the romantic letter from Martha Clifford, which contains a pressed yellow flower tucked inside.

Bloom composes a flirtatious reply letter to Martha at the Ormond Hotel bar, hiding his writing beneath a newspaper.

Boylan arrives at Bloom's house and knocks on the door while Bloom sits helplessly at the Ormond Hotel bar.

Ben Dollard sings the Irish nationalist ballad The Croppy Boy to an emotional crowd at the Ormond Hotel.

The citizen hurls a biscuit tin at Bloom's departing carriage while screaming antisemitic abuse after him in the street.

Bloom hallucinates being put on trial and then elected as the messianic leader of a city called Bloomusalem.

Bella Cohen enters the brothel and dominates a feminized version of Bloom in a humiliating hallucinatory sequence.

Stephen hallucinates his emaciated dead mother rising through the brothel floor and commanding him to repent his sins.

Bloom has a vision of his dead infant son Rudy while bent over the unconscious Stephen on the street.

Bloom returns to his bedroom and discovers rearranged furniture and other signs that Boylan visited Molly earlier that day.

Molly Bloom recalls the day Leopold proposed marriage to her on Howth Head and remembers saying yes.

Beneath the day's visible events lie the turning points that define Stephen, Bloom, and Molly as characters. Small moments carry enormous weight: a misheard remark sets off a chain of misfortune, a letter from a stranger becomes a window into Bloom's loneliness, and an absent key reveals who truly holds the power in a household. The afternoon at the Ormond Hotel brings Bloom's anxiety to a breaking point as he composes a love letter to one woman while imagining another man with his wife. The evening's drunken hallucinations in a brothel drag both men's hidden grief into the open, forcing Bloom and Stephen to confront their dead and their guilt in vivid theatrical form. The novel closes with Molly's private monologue, which overturns the male perspective that has dominated the day and ends not with loss but with the memory of a yes.

The discoveries, decisions, and visions that reveal who these characters truly are.