SOURCE: Girling, Harry. “The Jew in James Joyce's Ulysses.” In Jewish Presences in English Literature, edited by Derek Cohen and Deborah Heller, pp. 96-112. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Girling presents a detailed examination of the character of Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, focusing on Joyce's conception of Bloom's typical and atypical Jewish traits.

Unlike the Jews discussed in the previous chapters, the Jew in James Joyce's Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, is usually thought of as an Everyman figure. Not that he is going about looking for his soul, like the central character of the medieval play of Everyman. Rather he is like the man in the street, but larger and plumper than life; he is nothing and everything at the same time. He is a fairly faithful husband with a constant hankering towards an adulterous intrigue; he earns enough to get by...