Bloody Oxen of the Bloody Sun

Arguably the most difficult section of the book, this chapter merely attempts to draw a comparison between the gestation of a fetus and the development of the English language through a narrative style of a series of pastiches reflecting the major stages of literary development. In doing so, I think Joyce is recalling Stephen's notion of Shakespeare's having "fathered" a literary race as well as the ongoing theme merging the act of biological creation with the act of artistic creation. In the Homeric episode, our hero and his men land on the island of Helios, the sun god, with Odysseus warning his men (per prophetic orders from both Circe and Tiresias) to refrain from harming Helios's sacred cattle. When inclement weather causes the men to be stranded on the island long enough to have expended their provisions, Odysseus's men go behind their captain's back and slaughter enough cattle for a six-day feast. When the weather clears up, the men depart, only to be subsequently struck down by Zeus's thunderbolt, leaving Odysseus the sole survivor.

The chapter takes place at the maternity hospital, with Mina Purefoy in the midst of labor and Bloom meeting up with Stephen, Mulligan, and a bunch of drunken med students. Here we finally see Bloom in an overtly paternalistic role, lamenting Stephen's drunkenness and the fact that Stephen is wasting his life-bearing semen on prostitutes (or "murdered his goods with whores" (391)). This becomes the central correlation for Joyce, who sees the story of the slaughtered cattle as a "crime against fecundity" - that is, copulation (or masturbation) without any intention of actually creating life. Conversation here includes contraception, birth defects, infant mortality, and even Buck Mulligan's offer to set up a "national fertilizing farm ... [with] his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female" (402). Lynch mocks Stephen's literary ambitions: "That answer and those leaves ... will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father" (415). The chapter ends with the group heading out to another bar, and eventually to Dublin's red-light district; Bloom will follow, presumably to keep a watchful eye on young Stephen.

My advice on reading this chapter is as follows:
Option 1: Read it slowly carefully, with a lot of outside help to piece together stylistic and thematic elements.
Option 2: Read it rather quickly, getting the gist of the action and using any one of a number of online guides/summaries to help ground you
Option 3: Don't read it. Just get an online summary so you can move on to the next (slightly) more comprehensible chapter. I won't tell the teacher.