Chapter IX Summary

The next morning, the narrator wakes to hammering and the sound of rain. De Selby's idea of heaven is bound up with water, and he underwent many lawsuits for excessive use of water, which mysteriously disappeared. De Selby's experiments also required much loud hammering. The narrator adds a lengthy commentary of de Selby's "Codex," an indecipherable handwritten document of which there are four different supposed originals.

The sounds the narrator hears come from a man out in the rain building the scaffold for the narrator's hanging. The narrator (or rather, his soul, Joe) notices that the builder drops a hammer on his foot but does not react. The builder turns out to have a wooden leg, and the narrator sends him off with a plea for help to Martin Finnucane, the captain of wooden-legged men who promised to help him.

Chapter IX Analysis