Hope in Ulysses

Ulysses challenges its readers to keep up with changing narrators, perpetually modulating language and constantly evolving characters whose inner monologues and reminiscences depict a psychologically rich journey. This groundbreaking novel, if viewed as a traditional narrative, walks slowly, giving the reader time to establish his or her own relationship with the story. What emerges is whatever the reader puts of herself into it or seeks to get out of it. Though the action is little there is so much richness in the imagery and in the evolution of the main characters that the novel itself seems to affirm both the complexity of the intellect and the necessities of the senses. The character of Leopold Bloom makes the journey of Ulysses most compelling for me because of his ability to face adversity with both a capacity for hope and a charitable faith in the goodness of life. He has a fundamental optimism. The messages of hope and hospitality are also symbolically by depicted by food and bread in Ulysses, signifying to me that Bloom’s journey is to reconcile his soul and to come to terms with the loss of his son and the changes inherent in the relationship with his wife Molly.
We see Bloom’s hope primarily through two events. First, Bloom like Telemachus in The Odyssey, has lost his son Rudy. Where Odysseus has the hope of finding Telemachus again, Bloom knows that Rudy has died, and yet seeks reconciliation and peace in order to move forward. Second, Bloom discovers that his wife may be having an affair with the enigmatic Blazes Boylan, a character who represents all that Bloom is not. Bloom seems to appear out of nowhere in the Calypso chapter, moving purposely and slowly about the kitchen, and talking to only the cat. Boylan, in contrast, is the dandy whose presence can be heard and felt before he is ever actually in the room. When Bloom becomes aware of the correspondence between his wife and Boylan he chooses to ponder it rather than face it head