Who is Paddy Dignam in Ulysses?
Paddy Dignam is the Dublin man whose funeral Bloom attends at Glasnevin Cemetery in Episode 6. He died suddenly of a stroke, helped by drink, leaving a widow and five children. Bloom spends part of the day helping to collect insurance money for the family.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Several episodes. Bloom, telling M'Coy in the street that he is on his way to the funeral.
—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today.
What it means in plain English
Dignam is dead before the book begins, but he is everywhere: his funeral in Hades, his son Patrick buying pork steaks in Wandering Rocks, his insurance in Cyclops, and his ghost in Circe.
Bloom's kindness to the family is one of the quiet good deeds of his day.
Literary context
In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus meets Elpenor, a comrade who died drunk, in the underworld. Dignam is Joyce's Elpenor.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 5, 6, 10, 12 and 15
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
How did Paddy Dignam die?
Of a stroke, which his friends blame on drink.
Related terms
Glasnevin Cemetery
Glasnevin is Dublin's great Catholic cemetery, where Paddy Dignam is buried in Episode 6. Bloom watches the burial, thinks about death with frank curiosity, and notices a stranger in a macintosh. Parnell and O'Connell are buried there too.
The man in the macintosh
The man in the macintosh is an unnamed stranger in a raincoat whom Bloom notices at Paddy Dignam's funeral in "Hades" (Episode 6). He turns up again several times during the day. Joyce never reveals who he is, and he is one of the book's most famous unsolved puzzles.
Rudy Bloom
Rudy Bloom is Leopold and Molly's son, who died at eleven days old, eleven years before the novel. Bloom thinks of him throughout 16 June, and his ghost appears at the end of Circe as an eleven-year-old boy reading a book.