# Ulysses — Character guide

> Key figures in Ulysses by James Joyce.

- [Stephen Dedalus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/stephen_dedalus.md): Stephen shares a Martello tower with the mocking Buck Mulligan and an Englishman he distrusts, playing the cold intellectual while his mother's death gnaws at him. He teaches history to boys who barely listen and trades 
- [Leopold Bloom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/leopold_bloom.md): Bloom moves through the city as an outsider—Jewish in Catholic Dublin, cuckolded in his own mind, dodging acquaintances who want favors and funerals. He mourns a dead son, worries over his wife's coming tour, and finds o
- [Molly Bloom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/molly_bloom.md): Molly is a professional singer with a Belfast engagement and a reputation that travels faster than she does. Her affair with the flashy Boylan shadows Bloom's whole day, while her half-sleeping thoughts drift through lov
- [Buck Mulligan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/buck_mulligan.md): Mulligan holds court in the Martello tower, shaving, whistling, and turning the Mass into a joke, with Stephen as his favorite audience and target. He is charming, generous, and casually cruel—calling Stephen 'Kinch, the
- [Simon Dedalus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/simon_dedalus.md): Simon Dedalus moves through Dublin's pubs and parlors with a song on his lips and a story about the old days, mourning his wife and his lost prospects in the same breath. He loves Stephen but can't reach him, and his imp
- [Blazes Boylan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/blazes_boylan.md): Boylan manages Molly's coming Belfast tour and, more intimately, her afternoons, moving through the city with the swagger of a man who always gets what he wants. He is loud, well-dressed, and utterly without introspectio
- [Mrs Breen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mrs_breen.md): Once Josie Powell, she courted the same young Bloom who eventually chose Molly, and the memory of that rivalry hums beneath their chance meetings. Now Mrs Breen, tethered to a husband whose eccentricities make her a figu
- [Haines](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/haines.md): An English student staying with Stephen and Mulligan at the tower.
- [Lenehan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/lenahan.md): Lenehan is the city's living connective tissue: he knows every horse, every debt, every rumor, and he trades them for pints and attention. His patter is relentless and often funny, but it masks a man perpetually on the m
- [Paddy Dignam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/paddy_dignam.md): Paddy Dignam is a familiar, unremarkable man about town, the kind of friend whose death arrives as a shock precisely because he seemed so ordinary. His funeral draws Bloom, Simon Dedalus, Martin Cunningham and others int
- [Martin Cunningham](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/martin_cunningham.md): Cunningham is the kind of man Dublin leans on: capable, tactful, and trusted with other people's grief and money. In the funeral carriage and later at Barney Kiernan's, he manages the awkwardness of Bloom's presence with
- [Alf Bergan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/alf_bergan.md): A clerk and friend of the newspapermen.
- [Joe Hynes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/joe_hynes.md): A journalist who writes about the funeral.
- [Ned Lambert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/ned_lambert.md): A seed merchant and friend of the Dedalus family.
- [Tom Kernan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/tom_kernan.md): A tea merchant and former commercial traveler.
- [Corny Kelleher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/corny_kelleher.md): A funeral undertaker and occasional informant.
- [Richie Goulding](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/richie_goulding.md): Stephen's uncle, a poor and deaf clerk.
- [The Citizen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/the_citizen.md): The Citizen embodies a fierce, exclusionary nationalism, holding court in the pub with his dog Garryowen and a circle of nodding drinkers. His grievance is real, but his rage curdles into antisemitic venom when Bloom ref
- [John Wyse Nolan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/john_wyse_nolan.md): A friend of Bloom and a regular at Kiernan's pub.
- [Mrs Dedalus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mrs_dedalus.md): Stephen's deceased mother, who appears in his memories.
- [Milly Bloom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/milly_bloom.md): Leopold and Molly's daughter, working in Mullingar.
- [Rudy Bloom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/rudy_bloom.md): Leopold and Molly's infant son who died shortly after birth.
- [Malachi Mulligan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mulligan_malachi.md): Mulligan opens the novel shaving on the tower roof, intoning a mock mass and teasing Stephen with the nickname Kinch. He is brilliant, generous, and casually cruel, a friend whose wit cuts as often as it entertains, and 
- [Zoe Higgins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/zoe_higgins.md): Zoe works the parlor of Bella Cohen's establishment, where she trades barbs and caresses with equal fluency, reading clients faster than they can read themselves. She fixes on Bloom with unnerving accuracy, naming his hi
- [Bella Cohen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/bella_cohen.md): Bella rules her brothel with a whistle and a glare, a massive presence who collects her fees and her dignity in the same breath. In the Circe episode she transforms into the dominatrix Bello, forcing Bloom to confront fa
- [Lynch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/lynch.md): A medical student and friend of Stephen who accompanies him to the brothel.
- [Gerty MacDowell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/gerty_macdowell.md): Gerty sits on the rocks with her friends, conscious of her limp, her cheap finery, and the sailor's gaze she imagines upon her. She dreams of a dark gentleman who will love her for herself, and when Bloom watches from a 
- [Mrs Purefoy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mrs_purefoy.md): A woman in prolonged labor at the maternity hospital.
- [Dr Mulligan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mulligan_dr.md): As Dr Malachi Mulligan, he plays the role of healer and jester, shaving atop the tower while intoning mock-Latin and needling Stephen about his Jesuit past and his dead mother. His charm is real, but so is his betrayal: 
- [Vincent Lynch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/vincent_lynch.md): A medical student and friend of Stephen's.
- [Mr Deasy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mr_deasy.md): The headmaster of the school where Stephen teaches.
- [John Howard Parnell](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/john_howard_parnell.md): Charles Stewart Parnell's brother, a minor public figure.
- [Mrs Breen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters/mrs_breen_mr_bloom.md): Mrs Breen buttonholes Bloom on the street with news of her husband's lawsuit and her own faded glamour, her hat flickering in the sun as she talks. She remembers Bloom from years ago, when he and Molly were young and she

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ulysses_se/characters