The motif of the flower riddles the chapter “Lotus Eaters”. In this chapter our Odysseus is supposed to have escaped calypso but still be hung up on some other island. We left off when Bloom was eating breakfast and reading the paper. This chapter starts off with him already out of the house and walking towards the funeral. Between his house and the funeral, an important but hazy event takes place when he stops by the post office and picks up a letter. The letter is addressed to a “Henry”. I assumed it was a letter sent by his wife that was sent back, or had the incorrect address on it or something. In the letter was a small yellow flour. He also pauses for some time in front of an oriental tea spot (an easy allusion to the lotus eaters). Eventually he gets to the funeral and then to a perfume store on his way to a bathhouse.

The escape of Calypso is reified by the reality of his wife’s adultery. In the previous chapter, as seen in his perspective of his daughter, Leopold didn’t want to make any moves on suspicion. Sort of like hamlet as well. Leopold thinks, in reference to his own daughters sexual promiscuousness: “O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does.” Assuming that Leopold uses this same logic on his wife, it is only now that he would be forced to take action. Just seeing her put a letter under her pillow (for all it is worth) didn’t give him probable cause. The Lotus Eater chapter, is the chapter where Leopold wakes up to smell the roses.

Though there is a little dialogue, most of the chapter is taken up by blooms wandering thoughts (no pun intended). He thinks about his wife and the disillusionment of her adultery. He thinks about death a little. But, in regard to the drown man I found it amusing that unlike Steven, who thinks of the bloated drown corpse, Leopold thinks of a man in the dead sea who, ironically, cannot drown because of the buoyancy of the water.
Also, in reference to the father son relationship, Bloom imagines Abraham’s recognition of his son Nathan. This biblical scene is much like the one when Odysseus meets Telemachus, who thinks he is dead.

Two references to Yeats: one in Maude Gonne and the other might be a stretch but, Holohan and Houlihan. When bloom has a quick word with M’Coy, M’coy tells him that he heard about the funeral through Holohan, which sounds sort of like Houlihan.