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Ulysses in Exile

He could be regarded as a modern "Odysseus", walking through Dublin streets, questing for several things; a request for his hybrid identity, a request for cognition of himself, a request for a deeper discovery of what has been left rear and what is he confronting now, particularly of his home affairs. In this article, the design is to study Bloom`s life to get out in what ways he is considered an expatriate in Dublin.

To what extent his physical and/or spiritual exile is the issue of his intellectual representations. Joyce created his fictional "Everyman", or as some critics may bid him an "extraordinary ordinary man", Leopold Bloom in duplicate to its classical equal, Homer`s Odysseus. Based on Sherry Bloom`s wandering and roving "not only resemble the adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses), but also recalls the goal and hope of that homeward voyage; the Greek hero`s desired reunion with son and wife" (2). The central parallel to Homer is the fact the Molly Bloom is besides being courted by a lover, energetic and lively Blazes Boylan a fellow singer of Molly. The just and of course major dispute is that Penelope of classic Ulysses retained her loyalty toward Homer`s Odysseus, while Molly did not, apparently. This fact in Blade`s words takes Bloom "on an Odyssey around Dublin while at the same time he is prevented from returning home in character he intrudes on Molly and Blazes Boylan" (114).

Exile of the Wandering Jew

And I go to a run too, says Bloom that is scorned and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant. (U 31).

Leopold Bloom as an ad-canvasser Irish Jew whose primary action is to pass around Dublin, - even the nature of his job requires this walking, - could be considered an historical Jew traitor in the intensely catholic environment of Dublin. He is an outsider, a foreigner quintessentially, in his home, in his metropolis and among his friends. Notice a little conversation that takes place in Bloom`s absence: "is he a Jew or a pagan or a holy Roman or a swaddle or what the sin is he? Says Ned" (335-6). And the result is like this: "he`s a perverted Jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system" (U 335-6). Ulysses, according to Cawelti, examines many aspects of exile. One of its protagonists Stephen Dedalus has flied to Paris to give forth from the repressive forces of his homeland to inspire his artistic soul. The other protagonist Leopold Bloom, an Irish Jew is in many ways an exile in his own country. In the new Ireland of Joyce`s time, Bloom bears in himself some features of both Irish and Hebrew races. He could be considered a "production of Diaspora who has metaphorically wandered far from his Palestinian homeland" (Cawelti 43). In the surrealistic chapter of "night town", Bloom in a king`s costume promises his folk to form a new Jerusalem, a new homeland, a kind of utopian- like area in which according to Bloom`s intellectual part men and women are adequate and detached from injustice. Besides, like old father Abraham, he has been called upon to sacrifice his sole son, Rudy. In this case, of course, the sacrifice was unwilling and the baby was not spared; no angle appeared with good news of saving. Bloom, sonless and sorrowful, wanders the world without any promise of proceeds to home. He has disregarded the key to his own house.

Actual Exiled Bloom

What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his aid? The figure of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man. Why solitary (ipsorelative)? Brothers and sisters had he none. Yet That man`s father was his grandfather`sson. Why mutable (aliorelative)? From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatix. From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal creator. (U 628-9)

Leopold Bloom, an island in himself, is definitely aware of the fact that he is an outcast at his home. This is obvious in his flow of thoughts and emotions. Bloom as a modern Odysseus is far from his place and from his family members. His mother has committed suicide; his only eleven-day son has died years ago; his 15 year old daughter, Milly, seems to be on a business affair out of Dublin, sending letters home, while she is leaving to take a date with Alec Bannon. Above all, his wife Molly is leaving to see her lover at 4 P.M. June 16, 1904. All of these force Bloom to get farther from home, both physically and mentally. After his only baby son, Rudy, died Bloom remains in his desperate loneliness. He thinks with himself "if little Rudy had lived. See him get up. Hear his part in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance" (U 90). His promise of having a son has been dead and abrupt, just wish the flow of sentences of the former passage. Bloom not just is conscious of his solitary state, but it seems that he does not try to convert his condition and come out of this state. This is manifest in the fact that he and Molly could not get a sexual relationship after the son`s death, apparently due to Bloom`s discontentment. Nevertheless, when he becomes aware of Molly`s tryst with Boylan, he retreats more into himself in depression. He decides not to go back home, because he thinks that there is not a family any more and "all is lost now" (U 271). A faithless wife first brought strangers to our shore . . . . A woman too brought Parnell low" (U 40), he thinks sorrowfully. Alternatively, in another passage he reveals his sense of loneliness more, as this: " . . . went Bloom, soft Bloom, I smell so lonely Bloom" (U 285). He repeatedly emphasizes his only condition caused possibly by a faithless wife, a dead son, a heedless daughter. "I smell so lonely . . . too dear, too close to home, sweet home" (U 289). Therefore, Leopold Bloom the melancholy outcast figure of Ulysses according to Henderson "begins thus by exile; the transportation of his body offers a prominent illustration of the deportation of his heart" (117).His vision is preoccupied with the idea of construction a new home; what he has been far from for a long time. He intensely wishes a genuine domestic life. He tries to conceive of a call for that imaginary home, "What might be the list of this eligible or elected residence? Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold`s flower villa" (U 635). He is alone in construction and choosing a call for his imaginary house. Edward Said in Reflections on Transportation and Other Essays also asserts on the sadness associated with the departure of passion and house simultaneously. He believes "what is straight of all exile is not that place and honey of abode are lost, but that red is integral in the very existence of both!" (185). Bloom`s love and family have been confounded together.

Up to this period Mr. Bloom`s actual and physical exile from his house and house was studied. However and yet, he is actually exiled in another possible way as well. He is an Irish Jew, with a Hungarian origin. Nationally speaking, both Flower and his mother are considered foreigners in Ireland. Furthermore, Leopold Bloom does not make any brothers or sisters or any relatives in Dublin. His house name is likewise a barrowed one. Bloom`s original family name has been Virag, meaning flower in Hungarian language. He changed Virag to Bloom after his father`s derogatory suicide. Accordingly, even the Dubliner dentist`s namesake is an accident. This is what Bloom`s friends discovered long ago. All of them look to be cognizant of Bloom`s dislocation and loneliness. "And later all, says John Wyse, why can`t a Jew love his state like the next fellow? Why not? Says J.J. when he`s quite certain which state it is" (U 335). As apparent from this short dialogue and many other like examples in Ulysses, the early and apparently very crucial element in alienating Bloom is that he is a Jew; a Jew in the ardent Catholic environment of Dublin. Although, Bloom has converted to Catholicism in place to marry Molly and so he has experienced some sentence of being protestant, he is even known and hardened as a Jew. Bloom also still considers himself a Jewish Dubliner. For example, this could be sensed in his outlook for a male heir to get the christ of Jewish race, or in his surrealistic desire to make a new "Bloomusalem" (459). Bloom`s double multi-layer strangeness as a Jew and a Hungarian in Ireland is intensified by the fact that Dublin itself is an occupied city, a colony whose identity is indeterminate. Therefore, based on the colonial theory all the citizens` identity is under question; nothing is stable. Enda Duffy, in Semicolonial Joyce, extends this smell of disaffection to all of the Dublin citizens. Duffy believes:

Dublin in Ulysses is a home without any heart of viable political office and hence ( as no real alternative sites of controversy are suggested in the novel) without any real possibility that the metropolis could be as the place of viable community. In this light Bloom`s self cultivated marginality is a normalizing, rather than an othering strategy: his ostracized solitariness is the condition of every citizen in the city. (Duffy 49)

Consequently, considering Duffy`s opinion one could attribute this exilic state in Dublin to all of the Dubliners living in their hometown, but under a foreigner`s power and domination. Bloom ,who could be considered an "Everyman" representing all the exilic features in Joyce`s mind, is treated coldly and is ignored repeatedly wherever he goes. For instance, in chapter 7, entering in the newspaper office he is ignored, mocked and rebuffed. Again, Based on Duffy who asserts on the public transportation and marginality of all Dubliners:

Just as Bloom is on the margins of the newspaper office and of every group he encounters from the funeral mourners to the men carousing in the brothel, so too are the members of those groups themselves on the margins of any presumed centers of power-hangers-_ (Duffy 49)

Thus, Joyce projects his smell of alienation, and all the Dubliners` sense of alienation in Bloom`s dislocation and desolation in his hometown. To conclude this part notice Blades view about Bloom`s alienation that in fact "the central chapters of the novel emphasizes this notion of his alienation amidst the teeming life of the city" (140).

Metaphoric Exiled BloomIs he a Jew or a Pagan or a Holy Roman or a swaddler or what the sin is he? Says Ned. (U 335)

Leopold Bloom is about by definition an exile, both physically and spiritually. The reason, which intensifies his alienation both physically and, of course symbolically, as mentioned before is his Jewish origin. This blood does not propose any sort of support, but imposes him to a whirlwind of cruel insults. According to Jewish beliefs, Jewish people are promised to receive justice and they should be waiting for a savior, a jesus who comes and establishes justice everywhere. Evidently, Bloom cannot find any real justice, equality, love, and brotherhood around him in whatever religion he once believed. When he confronts a young blind man, he thinks with himself: "poor fellow. Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the judge being born that way?" (U 182). Bloom seems to rap the unit scheme of judge and creation. He cannot see any repose of person in God`s promise of justice and unlimited love. This he might get noticed when his infant son died very soon. As a Jew, he is wait for a redeemer. Nevertheless, even his very desire of having a son, whom he expects so compassionately, vanishes very soon within eleven days. In gain to these, his fatherlands, both Hungary and Israel are far fetched and a foreigner force occupies his motherland. Therefore, his symbolic and spiritual exile and alienation is intensified in the darkness of his homelessness. Bloom is mortal with the ghost of the artist and intellectuality who according to Levine is evidently an "odd man out in Dublin" (123). Levine summarizes some reasons why Bloom is an outcast in Dublin as this:

Bloom is odd man out in Dublin: he does not drink; he does not buy drinks for others; he does not bet (though he is suspected of doing so); he is a Jew (and doubly alien from his Jewishness, for he has chosen to suit both catholic and protestant). (Levine 123)

Bloom`s loneliness and sorrowful life at his family is what Edward Said considers as one of the "saddest fates" (47). Said believes that in "premodern" times exile was especially a "dreadful punishment", because the exiles should be far off from house and familiar places. However, Said in Representations Of The Intellectual declares exile also means to be a form of "outcast, someone who never felt at home, and was ever at odds with the environment, inconsolable about the past, bitter about the face and the future" (47). This passage explains Bloom`s state of exile clearly.

Intellectual Exile of Bloom

I endure for the reform of municipal morals and the bare Ten Commandments. New worlds for old brotherhood of Jew, Moslem and Gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the world day and night. Electric dishcrubbers, tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General pardon and weekly carnival with masked license, bonuses for all, Esperanto the universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of bar spongers and dropsically imposters. Free money, free love, and free lay church in a free lay state (U 462).

The former passage taken from the surrealistic chapter of night town might break the fact that Flower is a material conflict in Dublin and among his friends. Here, in a dream, Bloom in a king`s costume is promising his subjects of an idealistic and everlasting life, of something he himself desires to have, but does not receive now. He is a medium and careful person among the other Dublin people who perceives injustice, poverty, racism, violence and cruelty. In his dreaming, he seems to be in research of construction a utopia. Such utopian desires belong to those who are cognizant of the incongruities of the company they be in. As Sherry states, this transition "in the setting of Bloom`s character and the business he professes here for men and women, that mannerism is also an intellectual marker" (53). The fact that he considers men and also women is detectable in language of a seemingly average man of Dublin, someone of such a simple family, education, and occupation record. Based on Gramsci quoted in Said "all men are intellectuals . . . but not all men bear in order the work of intellectual" (3). According to the 1st piece of Gramsci`s quotation Leopold Bloom could be an intellectual even if he does not get the map of what we suffer in head of intellectuals` role. However, regarding this definition by Gramsci and of course Bloom`s lonely state and alienation, both forcible and symbolic, in Dublin Said`s own place of opinion about who could be called intellectuals is also applicable to Bloom. Said in his book Representations of the Intellectual states that primarily, intellectuals are among those who could be called "nay-Sayers", the nonconformists, especially to the societal norms and to what is imposed on people by power institutions. They are, according to Said, those who "raise embarrassing questions" in world and confront "orthodoxy and dogma" (11). Furthermore, in the foundation to the same book he declares that intellectuals try to "go down stereotypes and reductive categories", because they think that such stereotypes tend to be very "limiting to human idea and communication." Actually, they should be among those who question "patriotic nationalism, corporate thinking and a smell of class, racial or gender privilege." This is what could be noticed in Leopold Bloom`s manners clearly and would be discussed more in the next paragraphs. Therefore, regarding these features an intellectual`s voice and put in the club he lives tends to be a lonely one. He might be treated as an outsider, as somebody who questions authoritarian states and dares to utter "truth to power." Thus, an intellectual could be an exile at home, at his native culture and among his citizens. This is what Said explains as follows, "exile is the circumstance that characterizes the intellect as somebody who stands as a marginal figure outside the comforts of prerogative of ability and being-at-homeness . . ." (11). Finally, the other significant feature around the intellectuals in exile is that they make the power to see both aspects of things. They do not take events as given and ordinary. They get the power to bear out from events and study them, then to understand what caused things to be that way. Considering all of these features, Bloom`s character might be some intellectual signs. For instance, to get into consideration the opening passage of this part, he is in favour of equality, justice, and prosperity for all the people, whether men or women from any race, culture, or language. The fact that Bloom represents some intellectual signs is obvious in character to some of his actions; initially in his home spirit and in his kinship with Molly. After having her tryst with Boylan, Molly reviews the events of that evening and compares Boylan`s behaviors with Bloom`s. She confesses that Peak is a more considerate and civilised man. In her soliloquy, Molly reveals why she has been attracted to Peak and why she is still attracted to him. According to Blades Molly "could see that he `understood` or `felt` what a woman is. And this confirms an estimate that has been current through the whole novel: Mr. Bloom`s knack of beholding the other person`s level of view" (120). The fact mentioned above, that is considering the other person`s mind and will, seems to be a very democratic sign. Thus far, Bloom in line to the Citizen or Stephen`s principal at school, is the individual who understands each individual has the good to utter for him or herself. In his view, no one has any privileges over others, as he stands for the "north of all, Jews, Moslem, and gentile" (462). He professes for love, mutual love and apprehension that is what should really construct human societies other than hate and pious racism. He is the person who "helps the blind man kindly" (U 182). Some of his friends also hold that Peak is the "right quiet man" (U 177) and "he`s a good man" (U 178). For Bloom, the major topic of living is love. Love is the deriving force for him. He shows love and affection toward every living creature. For instance, the kind-hearted Bloom buys apples and throws it for "poor birds" (U 152). He is aware of the low life of the Dedalus. Their mother, the focus of bed and loving is gone. He feels sorry for the Dedalus` daughters and is concerned about Stephen, too. He thinks with himself that "home always breaks up when the father goes" (U 152). As clear, he does not limit love and affections to his own family; the screw and concern toward his dead son, the teenage daughter and the aging beloved, whom he still regards with respect, in spite of her unfaithfulness, extends to other creatures around him. In his debate with the racist Citizen he declares, "force, hatred, history, all that. That`s not living for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it`s the very contrary of that that is truly life" (U 331). By the opposite of hatred, he means love. He believes everybody should recognize that to know is to live. Consequently, he believes putting force against force does not work, either. The crucial component in Bloom`s consideration of bed is that based on Sherry "no less significant that the substance is the variety of utterance; negating the contrary, Bloom shows his own habitus, his ingrained tendency to see the two sides of an issue" (53). Regarding this business of Bloom, to fuck everybody, from any religious, nationality, and political background which logically should answer in repose and safety, Blades states "however, in price of Mr. Bloom`s character, `love` is an annex of the many positive values which he embodies in the novel: tolerance, equanimity, compassion, charity, and sensitivity among them"(117). The other feature distinguished in Bloom as mentioned in Blades too is Bloom`s tolerance. In the occasion of an intellect who stands against repressing power, Bloom also stands for unification of mass of any race. He does not consider that any religion, nation, or race has superiority over any other particular kind. These are his own language to express his belief that violence reaches nowhere. Hatred and enmity for him are but a variety of absurdity. He says to Citizen:

It`s all very delicately to vaunt of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality? I resent violence and intolerance in any form or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must get on the due installments plan. It`s patent absurdity on the case of it to hate people because they go around the box and speak another vernacular, so tospeak. (U 564)

Here, Bloom defends himself, and the multitude wish him, from the guiltiness of being born a Jew or in fact the guiltiness of existence the other. He definitely believes that being a Jew, a Moslem, or a gentile should not be considered a mistake or favor of any kind. Therefore, as light in Bloom`s definition of nation, the opening of removing all the boundaries between the nations is what he is looking for, regardless of his look of disruption and diasporic racial fate. Bloom believes "a country is the sami people living in the sami place . . . Or also keep in different places" (329). As it may be inferred here, Bloom dares to interrogate the traditional definition of what a country is. Although, the Irish citizens are loath to have him as an Irish man, because of his Hungarian as easily as his Jewish background, Bloom considers himself an Irish citizen because "I was born here. Ireland" (329). Cullingford in an article included in Semicolonial Joyce also indicates Bloom`s skeptical view around the "government of natural boundaries." In Cullingford`s view, Bloom`s definition of state is an "elastic approach to geography dictated by his diasporic Judaism" (224). Leopold Bloom, Joyce`s mild-hearted, considerate protagonist, not only stands for a united nation, other than the nations made through boundaries, he severely is against racism of any kind. Considering the one-eyed racist, Cyclops/Citizen, and the former Catholic Irishmen who take more ability and office for themselves than for Bloom (and the people like to him), Leopold Bloom seems to face these unchosen authoritarian representatives. He is not scared to show his open-minded ideas about nation, the feeling of nationalism, and resentment of violence toward men and women. He tries to "utter truth to force" from his weak position among Dubliners. Blades in his book How to Consider James Joyce believes that:

A more cautious fellow might have kept his head down. He is a handy target for their anger, a scapegoat, particularly as he insists on affirming his Jewish descent in the same breath that he asserts his Irishness, a combination which seems to be an anathema to his listeners. (Blades 116)

In spite of his poor house and educational background, Bloom seems to keep his individuality. He does not affirm to socially accepted rules easily. This is one of the intellectuals` representations according to Edward Said. On the other hand, Bloom seeks to increase knowledge of many things. As obvious from his wife and his friends` behavior, they relate to him as a site of knowledge and info at times. Molly refers to him when, for example, she has difficulty finding out some words` meaning. McCoy a Dublin acquaintance of Bloom tells, once when he was with Bloom, Bloom "bought a word from an old one in Liffey Street for two bob. There were fine plates in it worth double the money. The stars, and the moonlight and comets with long tails. Astronomy it was about" (U 233). Therefore, Bloom, even, from his seemingly poor situation is in research of cognition and is not scared to partake his bright ideas with his society members. He could be a representative of the intellectual among his lower than average set of friends. That is what imposes him to violent attacks and insults from his friends, or better to anticipate them his Dublin citizens. Some critics, such as, Joseph Valente in an article included in Semicolonial Joyce believe that the group`s attack on Bloom, insulting and belittling him, is actually a reflection of what has happened to them as the occupied, Irish colonized people. Valente believes that this assault on Bloom "clearly acts to terminate the injury of their own undecidable social inscription in the interstice of settlement and metrople" (122). Here, Dublin functions as "no property" and at once the "cap of Ireland, the heart of English pale and the place of colonial government" (122). Therefore, Dubliners might be considered as no man, embodied particularly in Bloom. To read what has been mentioned up to now into consideration, some intellectual features could be attributed to Bloom`s character and behaviors; including the fact that he resents any sort of gender, race, or national privileges. This is in gain to the fact that he questions some traditional and socially accepted boundaries and tries to bear against authorial sites, in spite of his somehow fragile position. Besides, Bloom retains his identity in a colonial-stricken society of heated mass opinions, struggling to "utter truth to king" on his side. To consider Gramsci`s definition of intellectuals, mentioned in Said that all men could be intellectual, but some of them have the use of an intellectual (4), Bloom also could be considered an intellectual, in spite of his vulnerable position. He is an intellectual generally speaking and therefore, an exile at his home, exiled from his own tradition and culture. This exilic state leads to his alone and dislocated domestic transportation of the intellectual. Alienating himself more from his spousal and social life might sooth the nuisance of seeing both aspects of things. He chooses exile to run and bear out from the place he does not care and cannot change seemingly. In an encounter and a kind of eye flirtation that Bloom has with a new daughter on a Dublin coast, Joyce reads the girl`s mind, who is observing Bloom with great care. She observes Bloom closely:

His eyes burned into her as though they would seek her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you swear them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his black eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the history of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. (U 355)

Bloom`s visual image is also suggestive of his lonely soul, his Jewish wandering, and his sorrowful thoughts. Bloom the intellectual exile at home, according to Said in Representations of the Intellectual, is "doubting about the face and future, and bitter about past" (47). Leopold Bloom incarnates the single figure, dislocated and alienated in his own land and culture, a kind of hybrid creature of colonial modern man who is sceptical of all the established religions, political, and national boundaries struggling to talk to power institutions from his vulnerable position. All of these different features collected in one person have been possible through Joyce`s rich allegorical, symbolic, and of course realistic observation of man.

Leopold Bloom the wandering Jew roaming in Dublin streets proves to be an essentially exilic figure. His exile is both forcible and spiritual. He is an actual exile in that he is isolated from his family and his house and he feels he has no place to return. At a deeper level, he is an exile from Hungary, where his father comes from originally, and symbolically speaking from Jerusalem, where the Jews always dreaming of. Meanwhile, some critics think that it is his spiritual exile that leads him to give the real idea of home. He is a spiritual exile, because he is alienated and isolated among his native culture at his hometown. Besides, he retains some intellectual features, such as, his clever definition of nation, or his fervent belief in equality of all people from all races and religions. This is in gain to his skin to stand against authoritative sites of office and oppression like church. His several conversions might represent his spiritual perplexity and his rejection of different religious authorities. Dubliners attack on this marginal figure might show the entire Dubliners marginalized situation in the colonial Dublin, under the colonizer`s gaze.

Works Cited

Attridge, Derek, ed. Cambridge Companion to James Joyce .Cambridge:

-Cambridge University Press, 1990. -. Semicolonial Joyce. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Cullingford, Elizabeth Butler. "Phoenician Genealogies and Oriental Geographies:

-"Joyce, Language, and race." Semicolonial Joyce. Ed, Derek Attridge. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000. 219-239.

Duffy, Edna. "Disappearing Dublin: Ulysses, Postcoloniality, and the Government Of

Space." Semicolonial Joyce. Ed. Derek Attridge .Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2000. 37-57.

James, Joyce. Ulysses with a Little Story by Richard Ellman .London: Penguin Books,1969 .

Said, Edward. Representations of the Intellectual. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.

Sherry, Vincent. James Joyce: Ulysses .Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.