Chapter 3 summary :

48-50.20: We hear the fates of the Rann-makers. Hosty, O'Mara, Cloran
(slightly differently named), Tom (called Sordid Sam) and the decent sort
(conflated with Shorty): and we wind up asking if the priest was himself
the cad.

50.21-55.02 : three schoolchildren ask HCE himself (later, disguised, as
much the cad as HCE with his pipe and pistol) the story, which he,
emphasizing his own Irishness, tells as if glorifying someone else: it
becomes patronizingly offering the humble cad a smoke followed by
self-praise.

55.03-57.15: and later (as the story gets more and more mythic) one of the
schoolchildren tells it to Coppinger's cousin, whose own auditors, when he
repeats it, envision that second report by the "doomed but always
ventriloquent Agitator" (56.05-6) as an awesome and symbolic gesture, and
they (and the 4) are conscious of themselves as ants before this giant.

57.16-61.27: all this has shown that it is impossible to determine the
facts of how to think about HCE (the First Draft makes this clearer), but
what is certain is that everybody talked about it: we get what is called
the "plebiscite", people's opinions some accusing some praising him, many
seeing it in sexual terms, mostly people responding in terms of their own
interests (and the whole thing a retelling of the Bywaters murder case).

61.28-64.21: So that leads us to what is really the beginning of the whole
unit which runs to the end of chapter 4, the survey of the "diversified
outrages" against him (i.e., they follow from this idea of people blaming
him) as he in effect settles into being the person, in exile in Ireland,
who is thought of like that--it is §2 of chapter 3, and drafted after the
first draft of §3, which begins at 67.28, which explains why that feels
like it ought to continue straight on from the plebiscite, blaming the
girls as it does). 61.28-62.25 spell out the transition and the theme, of
how in effect HCE is a reproach to the Irish, "convincing them of their
proper sins"--a kind of scapegoat.

And with an abrupt plot jump (present in earliest drafts) we suddenly get
(62.26) another recounting of the cad encounter, or at least the outside
attack, which becomes (63.20-64.21) an attack on HCE's house or pub (and
this I tend to call a version of the inside attack, and indeed like the
gossip and all, what follows the encounter).

64.22-66.09: all that has been presented as if HCE was just a victim, but
suddenly the narrator says wait a minute, maybe he's not so innocent as all
that--and the story of the geeser with his Peaches (calling on the Peaches
Browning story as the plebiscite called on the Bywaters case) seems to be
saying that HCE is involved in some equal dynamic (as if he were one or
other of the "fender and the bottle at the gate" of 65.35) involving
hanky-panky with girl number 2 [that is, it reminds us of his actual sexual
guilts, pulling us away from the more simply aggressive, even if ambiguous,
matters of violence and politics).

66.10-67.27: but this returns to tracking the motifs of HCE's guilt, which
is to say continues considering the diversified outrages which may be plots
to make him look bad--a letter comes to him from ALP (the letter itself,
though not much characterized here), and then we are told how the coffin
[first introduced here, I think--see 76.11, where it returns] which is
another version of the fender (and of the book itself) has been stolen
(that is, it casts doubt on HCE in the outside attack) and then we hear
more conflicting testimony (between brothers, as 67.26-7 makes plain) about
who was being aggressive at the gate (the constable seeming a Protestant
Ulsterman, so that the political dimension remains).

67.28-69.04: and then extremely awkwardly (explained by the fact that the
unit was drafted before what has preceded it here, and was to have followed
from 61.28) we get what is in fact a very good accounting of the relation
to the girls in the park, which is in effect another pass through the
Museyroom material, or even the Prankquean, emphasizing the inevitability
of men being teased by and being brutal to women--this time it is saying
the girls came to no good end and that (like the geeser episode, which we
can say it rhythmically echoes) we'd expect somebody like HCE to be
gossiped about (blackmail following reputation). [I am coming to think that
Joyce solved, in his mind, his structural difficulty by turning it into a
virtue: he must have said to himself 'I go back and forth between the two
components of guilt in the general HCE picture, that involving
aggression/homosexuality/anality as between men whether brothers or fathers
and sons, and that involving self-exposure,voyeurism, interest in
micturition, and heterosexual aggression, i.e., all the components of the
girls in the park: since these somehow echo and reflect (and are each
other) much as the apparent opposites of the male side do, I can let them
montage with each other and both be changing the subject and just looking
at it from its other side'.)

69.05-73.22: so we "turn wheel again" to the picture of HCE attacked in his
house (which had been testified about just now at 66.10-67.27, after having
been introduced at 63.20-64.21): this time is its full treatment, which is
in effect another full version of HCE's fall, of his being presented as
just trying to get along in Ireland (with all the pig and gate stuff) but
being attacked and hollered at for being who he is (so that this parallels
the sequence of the gossip after the Rann--it is just the father being
inevitably castigated for being what we saw him like at the theatre in
chapter 2). The house has been built for his protection (this is echoed in
chapter 4 too) and an "unsolicitied visitor" throws threats and epithets at
him and finally (72.27ff) pegs stones, leaving them behind and becoming as
he goes himself the HCE figure, with those stones the turds which are the
output of the cad encounter/Russian General encounter. That is, as
throughout here and chapter 4 the struggles between the two involved are
always ambiguous, in that it is just not possible to cleanly distinguish
victim and villain, or which role is 'really' HCE. From the very start
there is an aggressive component to him (i.e., he is the one with the
revolver), and this is in part the sign of his grandeur. At the same time,
he is also a fallen god, and Joyce didn't break this chapter at this point
until late--it just went on tracking HCE fallen, holed up in his
house/grave till he rises again; but that is now how chapter 4 begins.