Ulysses: One-Day Odyssey

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Running head: ULYSSES: ONE-DAY ODYSSEY Ulysses: One-day odyssey Written in 1922 by James Joys, Ulysses is considered to be a disputable masterpiece. 738 pages present a very thorough description of a single day of Leopold Bloom who is a common Dubliner living a common life. His odyssey starts at 8 am on Thursday, June 16, 1904 and ends 24 hours later. During this time, he cooks breakfast for his wife, Molly, feeds his cat, reads a letter from his daughter, Milly, goes to a post office and National Library, attends a funeral service of Paddy Dignam, visits Mrs. Purefoy at a hospital, goes to a magazine's office to put an advertisement, meets Stephen Dedalus, spends time on the Sandymount Strand, eats at pubs, meets different people and gets involved in some awkward conversations, comes back home, goes to bed, talks with his wife, notes the signs of her infidelity and falls asleep. The focus of the book is more on the thought and feelings than on actions. Every human goes on a journey; everybody’s life can be seen as an odyssey and Joyce was the first author who recognized it. In his Ulysses, he reflected reality and environment of one particular city and one particular man and thus made Bloom’s one-day quest universal. Unlike the mythical adventures of Odysseus (or Ulysses in Roman), the life journey of a common human is uneventful, boring and filled with thoughts and dreams rather than heroic actions. Those actions along with the ability to overcome great obstacles, extreme courage and high moral qualities, honesty and grace are the traits of heroes. The protagonist of the book, Leopold Bloom, is an antihero: being a Jew, he is an outsider in the society, and having no courage to confront his wife, he deals with her infidelity. But he also is a hero - he has courage to defend himself when the citizen insulted him in a pub. He has compassion and feeling

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