[Author’s Name]
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Essay on
James Joyce's Ulysses
Joyce's novel is set in Dublin on the day of June 16, 1904 and the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, is a middle-aged Jew whose job as an advertisement canvasser forces him to travel throughout the city on a daily basis. While Bloom is Joyce's "Ulysses" character, the younger hero of the novel is Stephen Dedalus, the autobiographical character from Joyce's first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. While Joyce develops the character of the young student, most of the novel is focused on Bloom (Clive, 1977).
The themes of masculinity and self-identity find an interesting parallel in the Homer "Cyclops" episode, when Ulysses taunts Polyphemus, confiding that his true name is "Noman." In addition to subtle references to "Noman" and "Nobody," Bloom is emasculated by references to "the adulteress and her paramour." Furthermore, Bloom has spent the day hiding from Boylan and just as his legal name Bloom differs from his ancestral name (Virag), Bloom is posing as Henry Flower as a method of escaping from his household troubles. That Bloom, Flower and Virag are synonymous indicates that under any name, Bloom cannot hide himself.
Bloom's wife Molly is a singer and she is having an affair with her co-worker, Blazes Boylan, and early in the morning of June 16, Bloom learns that Molly intends to bring Boylan into their bed later that afternoon. The Blooms have a daughter named Milly (age 15) who is away, studying photography. Ten years ago, Molly gave birth to a son, Rudy, but he died when he was eleven days old and Bloom often thinks of the parallel between his dead son Rudy and his dead father Rudolph, who killed himself several years before.
Stephen Dedalus is the central character of the novel's first three chapters, which constitute Part I of Ulysses.....
