n Irish Jew [Bloom] is both citizen and alien. In his wanderings around Dublin he meets many people whom he knows, but their Catholicism makes them strangers even as they are familiar" (McCoy & Harlan, 244). This is an eloquent evocation of the human condition in the twentieth century -- Joyce's century --, which has been overwhelmingly characterized by alienation.Traditional myth, such as the Homeric stories in which Ulysses has its roots, sought to romanticize the hero and transform his adventures into myth. Joyce, on the other hand, deliberately tried to de-romanticize his hero by making it almost impossible to see him in a heroic vein. Bloom is not handsome; he is not dashing; he is not adventurous. He is not the son of a god, or even a king; he has neither power nor position nor wealth. He is Everyman, living a thoroughly mundane existence in a prosaic world. Yet Joyce's novel forms the perfect backdrop for such a character, because his style of writing enables us to get under Bloom's skin in a way that would never have been possible with a more traditional hero and a more traditional method of storytelling. We are meant to see Homer's characters from a distance, as larger than life; we are meant to see Leopold Bloom from the inside out. Only in this way can we discern his humble heroism, and make the analogy that there is that same sort of heroism in us all. Because we can now see the common man as heroic, Joyce took the role originally played by Homer's Odysseus and cast a common man. Because he no longer subscribed to a traditional code of metaphysics, he brought in snatches of nearly every creed ever known to man and allows us to see they are essentially all one. Because he no longer wishes to romanticize his hero by putting him on a sailing ship in search of great adventures, Joyce puts him on a Dublin street surrounded by trades people and whores. Consequently, while Ulysses is not autobiographical in the literal way that Por...
