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Alf Bergan
Leopold Bloom’s father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who committed suicide in the Queen’s Hotel (which he also managed). He briefly appears in a flashback in “Circe.” Bloom thinks of his father’s death, like his son Rudy’s, throughout the day on June 16. Together, these two deaths represent the tragic break in Bloom’s family bloodline.
Rudolf Bloom, Sr. Quotes in Ulysses
The Ulysses quotes below are all either spoken by Rudolf Bloom, Sr. or refer to Rudolf Bloom, Sr.. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Episode 6: Hades Quotes
White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun.
—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.
A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better luck next time.
—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.
The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.
—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.
—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.
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Episode 18: Penelope Quotes
I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a few men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle of love in their natures to find two people like that nowadays full up of each other that would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost
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Rudolf Bloom, Sr. Character Timeline in Ulysses
The timeline below shows where the character Rudolf Bloom, Sr. appears in Ulysses. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Episode 5: Lotus Eaters
...role. She played Hamlet the night before, which reminds Bloom of Ophelia’s suicide, and then his own father ’s. Bloom passes some carriage-horses, whose heads are hiding in their feedbags. He hums “Là...
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Episode 6: Hades
...from another funeral leave and watches men carry Dignam’s coffin inside. Cunningham tells Power that Bloom’s father poisoned himself, while Bloom asks Kernan about Dignam’s life insurance and expresses his sympathies for...
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Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis
...about Eglinton’s own father, an uncultured man from the countryside. Then, Stephen’s thoughts drift to his own father greeting him when he returned from Paris to Ireland. Fatherhood is “a necessary evil,” Stephen...
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Episode 12: Cyclops
...is suggesting that Bloom has actually been helping the Irish Nationalists, but the narrator decides Bloom’s father must have been a fraudster who contributed to Ireland’s downfall.
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...Alf Bergan, J.J. O’Molloy, and the citizen don’t believe this, and when Martin explains that Bloom’s father was really a Hungarian Jew named Virag, the men get furious.
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Episode 17: Ithaca
...contains Bloom’s birth certificate, life insurance policy, and bank statements. There’s also the official announcement Bloom’s father made in the newspaper when he changed his last name from “Virag” to “Bloom.” Bloom’s...
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Bloom remembers his elderly father in bed, in pain from the nerve disorder neuralgia. Bloom regrets disrespecting his father’s religious...
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On the other hand, Bloom’s father also left him a sizable inheritance, which protected him from ever having to risk the...
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Episode 18: Penelope
...men to sacrifice everything for a woman, only “foolish” people would actually do that (like Leopold Bloom’s father , who committed suicide after his wife’s death). Molly recognizes Milly’s beauty, and then she...
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