portrait of an artist as a young man response
... made her severe against Parnell…He [Stephen] was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father…”(22-24) Mr. Casey’s anecdote about spitting tobacco in an obnoxious old woman’s eye affects Stephen—he is receptive to sensory images, and this one in particular because of his own poor eyesight. “It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye.” (24) This scene lays a foundation for Stephen’s later rejection of politics and Irish nationalism in chapter five. “—Do you know what Ireland is?—asked Stephen with cold violence. –Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.—” (148) By this he means that devotion to Ireland with all its arbitrary pride is smothering to those like Stephen who have truly artistic aims, and who see the limitations that such pride puts on the freedom of the creative spirit. The second event calls Stephen’s faith in the church into question for the first time. Beaten across the hand by his prefect of studies, Stephen’s senses are rudely jostled and the shock of pain stays with him for a long time thereafter. Father Dolan, his abuser, becomes a symbol of everything that Stephen will come to realize is unfair and hypocritical about school and the Church. Stephen tries to view the situation as Father Dolan described it—that it was, in fact, Stephen’s fault that he was beaten for being a “schemer.” “…he began to wonder whether it might not really be that there was something in his face which made him look like a schemer and he wished he had a little mirror to see. But there could not be; and it was unjust and cruel and unfair.” (36) The parallel later in his life comes when he is in remorse for having slept with a prostitute, and, inflicting sensory deprivation upon himself (a simulation of Father Arnall’s Hell), comes to realize that he is not at fault at all. The initial loss of trust in churchly wisdom at Conglowes follows Stephen for the rest of his life—the pain inflicted upon him there permanently scars his character. In reaction to this abuse by his prefect, Stephen makes the bold and individual move of reporting the incident to Rector Conmee. This final defining scene in the first chapter is how Stephen finds his ability to effectively take control of his own fate. “He was walking down along the matting and he saw the door before him. It was impossible: he could not.” (37) Indeed, this act parallels his later process of learning to rely on his own inner resources to liberate him from the obstacles that beset him everywhere, including the Ch...