Patrick "Paddy" Dignam

Patrick “Paddy” Dignam is considered as Joyce's analog of Elpenor, who died in similar circumstances and who greeted his friend Odysseus. He dies in a drunken stupor.

Each episode is represented by a bodily organ which gives life to the city. Each episode also has an allotted hour of the day, and meals chart the progress of time. Bloom is introduced in Episode 4, ‘Calypso,’ making breakfast in bed for Molly, and cooking a kidney for himself. Other episodes are ‘Lestrygonians’, the land of the cannibals, which is almost entirely about food; ‘Cyclops’ which takes place in a pub; ‘Circe’ in a brothel; ‘Ithaca’ at the Bloom’s home where Leopold makes cocoa for Stephen and tries to entice him to come and live with them, and where Partick “Paddy” Dignam is mentioned the most; and ‘Penelope’ which is narrated in Molly’s own voice, from the bed which has recently been vacated by Boylan.

Patrick Dignam dies a few days before the setting of Ulysses. In "Hades," all the men go to attend his funeral. Dignam has left behind his wife and a number of children, and Martin Cunningham feels the need to take up a collection for Mrs. Dignam. In "Cyclops," the men get confused over whether he is actually dead and then lament his death at length. Along parodic passage depicts Dignam rising from the dead and telling his wife where he left a boot he lost before he died. In Bloom's imagined court sequence in "Circe," Dignam appears as a dog. He defends Bloom for wearing black and asks after his wife, before walking away.