Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus are true exiles from the physical idea of ​​home and their houses. According to Cawelti, “one of them has given up (Stephen), and the other has forgotten (Bloom) the keys to his houses” (43). gibbons in semicolonial joyce argues that one of the main reasons for this abandonment of home is that “family dysfunctions were greater in Ireland, not because of a racial pathology, but because of the social and economic consequences of a post-famine colonial condition”. (168). Therefore, it could be inferred that the chaotic economic, social and, of course, political condition of Ireland in general could have led to the “dysfunction” of the family and home. Two examples of this type of disordered family are the Blooms and the Dedalus. The youngest and most radical, Stephen Dedalus, has renounced not only his home, but even the idea of ​​belonging to a family or, at least, to a father. The other, more compassionate middle-aged father figure, Leopold Bloom, has moved out of his house, due to his wife’s infidelity, who is going to invite his mistress to the bed of her house.

Bloom’s actual physical exile on his one-day wandering through Dublin could be part of his historical and religious displacement. His father was a Hungarian who had married an Irish woman. Both Bloom and his father are considered strangers in Dublin City. Despite this distance and geographical displacement, he loves Ireland very much. He declares this love several times during the novel. In the surreal nighttown episode, in the guise of an imaginary king, Bloom offers his subjects “Ireland, home, and beauty” (your 435). Also, he is Jewish. According to some historical and religious texts, the Jews are doomed to be wanderers and have no homeland of their own. Leopold Bloom symbolizes the historical/fictional wandering Jew who is doomed to be far away and exiled from his home/land. So instead of living in the Jewish promised land, he is living in occupied Ireland. Furthermore, more bitterly, instead of living with his family, he is exiled from the most private territory a man can claim in his home, which is his bedroom. “Aren’t you my beloved son Leopold who left his father’s house and left his father’s god Abraham and Jacob?” (your 431). With this sentence, Joyce refers to Bloom’s exile, both real and spiritual. He’s a physical exile from his home, not just because of his wife’s date with Boylan. He leaves home behind, because he has given up the very hope of staying home after his eleven-day-old son died a few years ago. He, too, cannot maintain a warm relationship with his wife. Thus, they become more alienated from each other and from married life. The fact that Molly is also a lonely person at home should not be ignored. Her loneliness reaches the point where Bloom tries to make up for his emotional deficiency by keeping a secret pen/girlfriend. Molly, on the other hand, invites her lover and colleague of hers to her house. It seems that Molly’s unheard of loneliness is no less than Bloom’s. Her youngest daughter is also working outside the home. She could also be, in a sense, an outcast.

“-I don’t mean to dictate to you in the slightest, but why did you leave your father’s house? -To seek misfortune, was Stephen’s response” (your 539-40). Stephen Dedalus, like Bloom, has left his home and his family to escape the unbearable situation in his home. Stephen’s flight also retains some mythical and religious connotations. His given name is reminiscent of that of the first Christian martyr. He also suffers and has suffered a lot for the church and Christianity (Catholicism). In order to escape the suffering he endures from men of God, he has to get away from religious representatives. Also, he is a Dedalus. He is the son of Dedalus, whose complex actions have led to a very chaotic and miserable family condition. Not only did he cause the means of his imprisonment, but all of his children and his late wife were trapped in this complicated maze made by his father. Unlike the mythical Daedalus, Simon Dedalus is not a skilled craftsman to invent liberating wings and save himself and his family from him. In contrast to Simon Dedalus, Stephen, who represents the mythical Icarus, who is as ambitious as his mythical equal, strives to fly by means of his self-made wings. To achieve this, he invents a pair of artistic wings to escape the miserable and confined family life. Consequently, an irresponsible father and a passive mother make Esteban leave his father’s house to “seek misfortune” (your 539-40). He leaves his home and Ireland at the end of Portrait At the age of twenty, he went to Paris to carry out his artistic career. On the death of his mother, he returns from his self-imposed exile to Dublin. Upon his return, he feels the loneliness of him deeper than before. He doesn’t go back to his father’s house and stays in the Martello Tower with a friend. However, he, at the beginning of Ulises, he finally decides to leave there too, because he feels that he is being mistreated there. He begins his wandering day in chapter one and this seems to parallel Bloom’s departure in chapter four. Bloom cannot return home either, for he too feels that his house has been occupied and his dignity insulted, as Stephen feels the same way about the presence of Mulligan and Haines in his rented house.

As can be inferred, both Stephen and Bloom, in order to escape from the chaotic and disorderly situation at home, prefer to leave it behind and seek refuge in exile. They both have a feeling of shame about their parents’ background and actions. Stephen still has a father who walks around Dublin, drinking and singing, leading his children to worse poverty and misery. At the same time, Stephen wanders the streets of Dublin in search of a “wise father who knows her own son” (your 410). It seems that, in Stephen’s opinion, Simon Dedalus is not a wise father, even though he warns Stephen of his bad and bad companions. Metaphorically speaking, Stephen is in search of a “wise father.” Across Dublin, Leopold Bloom is often ridiculed and humiliated for the suicide of his father. The difference, here, is that Bloom is a father himself. He has lost a son, in whom he had high hopes and expectations. Now, he is also looking for a surrogate son to fill part of his emotional lack.

Another common point in the lives of these two protagonists is the feeling of being betrayed by a woman. However, the nature of this betrayal differs in their lives. Stephen feels that her passive mother, who always suffered from her father’s irresponsible actions and asked other family members to suffer along with her, has betrayed him. His once beloved wife is also betraying Bloom. Although her sexual relationship has had some problems since the death of her son, Rudy, he loves and respects her, and is very kind and polite to her. It may be a far-fetched image, but if Joyce saw these two women as symbolic of the mother country, both Stephen and Bloom are being betrayed by Ireland itself in a larger sense. A mother whose passive and supportive behavior towards an incapable family leader caused the ultimate destruction and ruination of a family structure had betrayed one of them. A wife who lets a stranger into her private territory is betraying the other man. The family here in a broader scope could symbolize a society, a city or a country. The motherland had betrayed herself and her children several times before. Now the foreigners, the English, have occupied Ireland and are manipulating it.

Therefore, up to now it is possible to conclude from the life circumstances of both protagonists that they are physically exiled from the physical idea of ​​a place of habitation due to the disorderly and miserable family, economic, affective and political conditions. This actual exile certainly represents a deeper and more serious type of exile, which is his spiritual exile.

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