Stephen Dedalus is the Telemachus to Leopold Bloom’s Odysseus and, more loosely, an analogue for both Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Ovid’s Dedalus. Joyce saw himself in Dedalus, too. Like Hamlet, Stephen is a brooding but brilliant young man that lives mostly in his own head. Like Dedalus, he is “trapped” in a tower, but yearns to soar above the confines of his world. Stephen first appeared as the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which serves as something of a prequel to the role of Dedalus in Ulysses.

Ulysses opens with Stephen mourning his mother, May Dedalus. Those who’ve read Portrait  will remember how that book ended with Stephen refusing to take Easter commune, despite his mother’s earnest wishes. This rebellion bleeds into Ulysses, where Stephen has refused to kneel down and pray by his dying mother’s side.   

Dedalus works as a teacher while unproductively developing his own private thoughts on religion and literature, such as his famed theory on Hamlet. He is in some debt to his friend Buck Mulligan. Stephen Dedalus is the second character to appear in Ulysses, on page 5 of the comic.  

Fun Fact: Rob’s drawing of Stephen was inspired by his friend, the Philadelphian actor Allen Radway. “I never imagined him as anyone else,” Rob says.