PHOENIX PARK

Alfred Hunter became a model for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, of "Ulysses" through his actions shown after an incident in which Joyce was involved in a fight in Phoenix Park.

Joyce returned to Dublin in 1903 at the time of his mother's last illness and death, and he remained there in 1904. He met Nora Barnacle on June 16, 1904. Joyce was drinking heavily at this time. After one of these drinking sprees, he got into a fight with a man in Phoenix Park and he was picked up and cared for by a casual acquaintance of his father's, Alfred Hunter, who brought him into his home to take care of his injuries. According to Richard Ellman in Ulysses on the Liffey,"Hunter was rumored to be a Jew and to have an unfaithful wife, two disparate points that became important later. Joyce did not know him well, having (according to Stanislaus Joyce) met him only once or twice. This very lack of acquaintance added to the interest of the occasion, since Joyce regarded himself as hemmed in by indifference or hostility, and was the more surprised that someone unfamiliar, of temperament and background seemingly opposite, should have causelessly defended him. Here might be one of those 'epiphanies'---sudden, unlooked-for-turns in experience---which could prove the more momentous for being modest" (xiii). Thus, certain generous and caring traits of Leopold Bloom came from the model, Alfred Hunter.

Phoenix Park, twenty-two years before, had been the site of savage murders of British officials which were immediately condemned by Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell through his voice of moderation became a politician who could be trusted by the Irish and the British. 

In the "Aeolus" episode of Ulysses the journalist, Gallaher, skills are praised, "Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you. That was the sixth of May, time of the Invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you."