But in deciding whether or not Bloom is, finally, a "saint" or "sinner," one must realize that Ulysses is basically a comic novel and that Bloom is a very humorous figure. He thinks nothing of slipping his kidney from Dlugacz's into his pocket. He surreptitiously walks in a circle to pick up his letter from Martha Clifford (and is frustrated when M'Coy's chatter forestalls his reading it). He tries to follow the Woods' maid out of Dlugacz's but cannot do so. In Glasnevin Cemetery, his misreading of the Catholic ritual is as humorous as the discussion of suicide on the way to the cemetery was painful. And despite all of his efforts at concealment, Bloom was detected in the museum staring at the creases between the buttocks of the statues of nude women.
Joyce's portrait of Bloom, then, is one of a thoroughly whole man, one who can enjoy defecating, urinating, eating fried kidneys, and contemplating water; one whose sexual perversities, fully explored in "Circe" and in "Penelope," are balanced against the magnanimities of his personality. Indeed, in Bloom, Joyce has portrayed God's plenty, a sometimes pedestrian man, but a person for whom the physical world does emphatically exist.
