The Citizen (character)

In part, he is a satirical portrait of Irish nationalist (and Gaelic Athletic Association founder) Michael Cusack (1847–1906)[1] and Joyce's portrayal operates to expose what one critic called the "xenophobic ideologies of radical Celticists".

as a riposte to Leopold Bloom's assertions about the futility of armed rebellion as part of his xenophobic and anti-semitic views expressed in Barney Kiernan's pub.

[3] He ultimately accuses Bloom of being an economic parasite on the Irish and a "foreign" Jew and thus an inauthentic Irishman, as well being cursed by God for rejecting Christ's divinity as symbolized in the apocryphal Christian figure of Ahasuerus.

A character based on Cusack also appears in Stephen Hero, described as very stout, black-bearded, always wearing a wideawake hat and a long bright green muffler, with "the voice of an ox... he could be heard at a great distance, criticising, denouncing and scoffing.

[6] Since Cusack's biographer never mentions his subject as having been anti-Semitic and rather only as a man "full of prejudices of all kinds,"[7] it has been argued that the Citizen as he appears in the episode is a composite character composed of Joyce's distaste for Griffith's early anti-Semitic arguments in his first paper, United Irishman, and Cusack's brawniness and Celtic revival-based patriotism.