A day in the life of the author's city, Dublin, becomes a wild and joyous celebration of the love of a man for his home town Blum, the Jew, the outcast, and Stephen, young, Catholic, and in his own eyes a failure, come together in a hilarious scene in a brothel It is as if Stephen takes the place of the son who died when Blum was a young man and the story becomes a celebration of life itself