Summary

Following the police incident, Molloy continues on his bicycle, encountering some grey donkeys and a boatman smoking from a pipe. He then pauses, lies down in a grassy ditch, and remembers the fact that he had set out to meet his mother “at the beginning of this ending day,” though acknowledges that he does not remember why (23). After reflecting on the inscrutability of his own purpose and reasons for doing anything, he resolves to get out of the ditch, despite the fact that he does not want to: “How joyfully I would vanish there, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains (23). Getting up, he encounters a shepherd and his dog, and hears the bleating of sheep. Molloy expresses uncertainty as to how to get to his mother: he asks a passer-by what the name is of the town they are in. He attributes his...