Did Bloom discover common similarity factors?

between their respective similar and different reactions

to experience?

Both were sensitive to musical artistic impressions.

with preference to the plastic or pictorial ones. both preferred

a continental to an insular way of life, a cisatlantic

to a transatlantic place of residence. both hardened

by early domestic training and inherited tenacity

of the heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in

many religious, national, social and ethical orthodox

doctrines. Both admitted the alternately stimulating

and overwhelming influence of heterosexual magnetism.(you 586)

The above quote from Ulises represents part of the similarities and differences of the two protagonists of the novel very accurately. Therefore, James Joyce himself seems to be interested in comparing these two together. Although Joyce substitutes the two names as stoom and Blephen to suggest the possibility of their final unification of souls, he at the same time believes in their individual differences. He reveals it through a question and answer in the novel: “Which two temperaments did they individually represent? The scientific. The artistic” (you 603). Bloom represents, in Joyce’s view, a logical, father-like figure with mixed feminine emotions for children. He is not an academic or a formally educated man. His education, as Blades also warns, is “simple, basic” and, in reality, he is a “self-taught” man (125). One of his friends, for example, notices that Bloom is buying a book on astronomy and considers it as Bloom’s intellectuality and the difference in his thoughts and beliefs. On the other hand, Stephen who represents the artist tends to be a young man with an academic background. The language he uses is definitely different from Bloom’s, despite some similarity of his ideas to some extent. blades in How to Study James Joyce mentions this main difference very cleverly as follows:

Where Stephen’s internal monologue clearly reveals his

erudition, in its sophisticated sequence of academic knowledge

allusions, Mr Bloom’s tends to be errant,

unfocused, piling perceptions on top of each other

in an agglomeration of material. Generally, the contents

of Bloom’s monologue arise more often from

your immediate environment. is characteristically

speculative and more often focuses on people and

objects. Its component units tend to be shorter than

of Stephen. (127 blades)

Joyce again within the novel emphasizes that “although they did not agree on everything, somehow there was a certain analogy, as if their minds traveled, as it were, on the same train of thought” (you 577).

Edward Said opens his famous book Representations of the Intellectual giving Antonio Gramsci’s definition of intellectuals. According to Gramsci, all people can be considered intellectuals, but only some of them have the role of intellectuals in society. By this definition, both Bloom and Stephen could be classified among the intellectuals. Furthermore, also considering Said’s illustration of intellectuals, both Bloom and Stephen retain some intellectual characteristics.

Leopold Bloom, the kind-hearted, considerate and self-taught Jewish Dubliner, represents some intellectual signs. Bloom’s consideration for other people’s ideas is basic. This is what Molly mentions in her final soliloquy, comparing Bloom’s behavior to Boylan’s. Also, Bloom represents love, mutual love and understanding. consequently, he believes in the equality of all people, of any religion or race. In this way, he definitely resists against the authoritarian powers, from his very weak position, of course. This “telling the truth to power” and resisting “injustice” and cruelty is one of the intellectual representations mentioned by Said. Also, another prominent trait of Bloom’s personality is his tolerance. He declares that he “represents the union of all, Jews, Muslims, and Gentiles” (462). What he yearns for is, in a way, utopian and reformist ideals rather than murder and omission. This is what an intellectual should wish for human societies; Union of all, without superiority of any race or nationality over others. Furthermore, his definition of a nation as “the same people who live in the same place… or also who live in different places” (22-3) shows his open and democratic vision of the differences between nations. Obviously, he rejects all traditional definitions of, for example, nation, race, country, or religion, because most of these traditional definitions tend to be pious and one-sided. Bloom fervently stands for not only a united nation, but he is sternly against racism of any kind. He states that “it is a patent absurdity on its face to hate people because they live just around the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak” (you 563). Despite his vulnerable position in Dublin, as a Jew and of Hungarian origin, he speaks of international freedom, love, religious unity and justice. He is not easily inclined to the conservative and prejudiced mass ideas of the majority of Dubliners. According to Said, Bloom could be an intellectual, due to his struggles to retain his individuality. Another important credit factor for Bloom, regarding Said’s views on intellectuals, is the fact that he cannot be easily classified into existing defined groups. He breaks down “reductionist stereotypes and categories.” According to Howes, the reader will admire Bloom’s kind wishes for all and its universality and will “understand that the ‘big words’ of this universalism have a troubling and often hidden historical relationship to violence, both imperialist and nationalist” (263). Therefore, Bloom could be a simple every man intellect. Bloom is one of those intellectuals who does not have an intellectual role in society, but his enlightening insights and ideas are understandable to simple men. He is not one of those intellectuals lost in a world of jargon and professionalism, demanding translations and interpretations to understand his words.

The other intellectual in exile is the young Stephen Dedalus. He is known as one of the most radical young intellectuals of modern times. Revolutionary Stephen Dedalus questions and denies the simplest questions accepted by most people: “fatherhood can be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any child for any child to love him or he any child?” (you 207). This is in addition to Stephen’s rejection of all the traditional webs of Irish life: family, religion and nationality. Maverick Stephen Dedalus, like Bloom, tries very hard to retain his individuality and independence. The difference is that Stephen has fervent ambitions to fulfill his artistic ideals, while Bloom doesn’t seem to demand anything for himself. Stephen is, according to Said, one of those intellectuals who “do not adapt to domesticity or the monotony of routine” (17). Consequently, Stephen as an intellectual figure confronts “orthodoxy and dogma” and tries to “break stereotypes and reductionist categories”. Therefore, a young and modern intellectual like Stephen is not “fit for domestication” (16). Furthermore, Stephen opposes authoritarian symbols and professes individual liberation of thought and action. According to Said, the main career of an intellectual is related to education and freedom.

In Ulises, Joyce introduces two different types of Dublin intellectuals and introduces them to each other. Joyce seems to be very excited and interested in meeting her. She compares them repeatedly. Joyce states that “although they didn’t agree on everything, somehow there was a certain analogy, as if their minds traveled, as it were, on a train of thought” (you 577). The main difference between the intellectual ideas of these two protagonists comes from the difference between their personalities. One of them represents the artist and the other the scientist. One is more radical and emotional, the other more logical and progressive with a fatherly affection for the younger artist. One of them is more of an academic intellectual whose specialized vocabulary of expressing his ideas is definitely different from the simple words of the character “Everyman”. Of course this categorization is not absolute, as Joyce mentions in the novel “there is a touch of artist in Bloom” (you 234) and Stephen “proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather, and that he himself is the ghost of his own father” (you 24). Edward Said believes that a critic he calls a “public intellectual” should “refuse to be locked into the narrow professional specializations that produce their own arcane vocabulary and speak only to other specialists” (you 35). In this sense, Bloom is more of a “public intellectual” than Stephen; While Esteban at times is trapped in the “narrow professional specialization.” Nevertheless, the young intellectual Stephen is acclaimed throughout Dublin society. This connotes the fact that Stephen’s language is not that professional for them. However, he is more of an academic intellectual compared to Bloom, the symbol of Everyman.

Seamus Dean in an article in semicolonial joyce also mentions that the contrast between the two protagonists is one of the main dynamic elements in Ulises:

The contrast between the abstract and speculative Stephen and

the physically immersed Bloom is one of the guiding characteristics

of the initial episodes. Eating, drinking, urinating, defecating,

belching and farting, bathing enjoying sensations of heat

and taste, scent and smell, sexual fantasy and longing, Bloom is

based to a comically outlandish degree on the world of

body, of the city-world and its streets, of the stereotype of

the half sensual man. With comparable emphasis, Stephen

belongs to the world of the theoretical-intellectual who yearns for a world

shameless of the physical and the sexual, where the self can

achieve a purity of origin that radically distinguishes it from the

common or dominant forms of society. (Dean 32-33)

However, while there are some differences between the personalities of Bloom and Stephen, as Joyce himself mentions, there are also certain similarities, such as their isolation and dislocation in Dublin. Their life in exile and isolation in Dublin is of course the result of various reasons, but they have been exiled from a common society. The similar traits that link these two postcolonial peoples as intellectuals in exile is their insistence on retaining their individuality and independent opinions, each in their own personal style. Sherry also interestingly mentions this difference,

Bloom’s language affords such wide use and

complete (and inaccurate) as his character Everyman

; this sense of the word is manifestly at variance with that

of the neoscholastic Esteban, who is a lover (successful

or not) of linguistic precision, and whose words seek a

meaning as integral and well defined as the individual

fables in the myth of the solitary, transcendent artist

Labyrinth. (Sherry 85)

The two protagonists of Joyce in Ulises they are living a life of exile in colonial Dublin; both experience both physical and spiritual exile at home. In her day-long wandering in Dublin, there are some implications of her search for a surrogate father and adoptive son. Bloom’s and Stephen’s sense of loneliness, alienation, miserable home life and some distinctive intellectual traits in their treatments, as well as an oppressive colonial life on a deeper level, send Stephen and Bloom into a marginal position, in which they choose a life in exile.