Lestrygonians

In the Odyssey, Odysseus is able to flee what would otherwise be a desperate situation. He owes this good fortune entirely to intuitive suspicion and nearly unconscious foresight. In chapter nine of Ulysses, we see bad omens and bad feelings everywhere. On the first page, as Bloom reads a flyer for an evangelist he either thinks or reads "Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!!" The context is celebratory, but the phrase is panicked. An exclamation point is added each time. It's hard not to connect this line to an image of Odysseus' men fleeing the Lestrygonians. The phrase also foreshadows the advances of a single man: Boylan, who Bloom flees in terror at the end of the chapter. The gulls "pouncing on prey" "from their heights" also resemble this epic attack. The annotations point out that the Lestrygonians "spear men like fish" further linking the birds that Bloom identifies with at first with the cannibals. Mrs. Breen, who is also a candidate for the decoy-daughter of the king in the Odyssey, tells Bloom of about her husband's cryptic encounters. He received a mysterious note that reads "u.p." and has dreams about an "ace of spades" - popularly recognized as a bad omen. Bloom flees the Burton on a bad feeling and revisits a vision-like memory of policemen attacking protesters.