Ulysses

Leopold Bloom is the primary protagonist of Ulysses. In the context of Homer’s poem, he corresponds to Odysseus and the story of the novel, like the story of The Odyssey, is the journey of one man returning home after a long, arduous journey. Whereas Odysseus is a heroic king, Bloom is an outsider. He is a 38-year-old ad canvasser whose Jewish family heritage makes him the target for many antisemitic remarks. This is the irony of Bloom’s character: He functions as an everyman, a representative of early 20th-century life, but he does not feel a part of a society that perpetually ostracizes and alienates him. The ordinariness of Bloom and the mundanity of his anxieties is a key part of Ulysses: Whereas The Odyssey told the story of heroic kings and magical quests, Ulysses finds the heroism of the everyman, exploring the capacity for rich, nuanced psychological depth even in the most unlikely of characters. Through his sheer ordinariness, through his vast unremarkable nature, Leopold Bloom embodies the Modernist desire to explore every aspect of the human consciousness in every part of society.

Bloom’s ethnic and religious identity is a complicated matter.