Chapter three is definitely not for the faint of heart. The idea of hell, and even heaven, is a heavy one. The mood throughout Chapter Three reflects Stephen's constant internal struggle to find where religion fits in his life. To be honest, his progression (or maybe regression?) is difficult to see. A once confident, albeit lustful and sinful, boy is reduced into a shell of fear.
I found the transition between Stephen's thoughts and the priest's sermon to be quite startling. Only pages before the holy sermon, we read about Stephens sexual lusts and his indifference to God. As readers we know everything about Stephen's character: his sins, his regrets, and most importantly how his changes and developments. From the morbid and sexually mature thoughts we are thrust into the exact world that Stephen has been dreading and avoiding. The 'pure world' is introduced with the the priest addressing the boys. Every few pages the priest addresses the young men as "my dear boys" or a variation of the same endearment. This would otherwise not be extraordinary, however it really emphasizes the two different worlds that Stephen is currently caught between. This very dynamic section in Chapter Three was reflected both on Stephen and the reader as well; we experience and live the novel with Stephen.
Another interesting aspect of the priest's sermon was his very direct allusion to Dante Alighieri and his ideas on the soul and the body. Dante's Inferno, Paradiso, and Purgatorio addresses the role of the body and the soul, both while in the living world and in the afterlife. This idea was explored quite a bit in the 14th century. At the time the belief was that the soul was to be protected by all costs. The body was disposable, for a lack of a better word, and was only meant for the meaningless and horrid life of the living world. A clean soul, protected by the body, was the path to heaven. This idea is quite interesting in relation to the struggles that Stephen is experiencing. Stephen's worldly desires and lusts begin to affect his soul and his thoughts. He begins to give up on God and scoffs at His influence in his life. After the eye-opening sermon, Stephen only begins rectifying his sinful pleasures by enduring physical discomforts. His lustful thoughts remain the same and therefore unsuitable for heaven. Stephen's development in Chapter Four explores this dynamic between body and soul further. Essentially, Stephen frees his mind.
The sermon in Chapter Three also brought out a feeling of confusion in me. The idea of heaven and hell and one's destiny is a very serious topic, especially the young men. The way the priest presents the information in his sermon is very different than what one might think. First he addresses the young men as, "my dear boys," acknowledging their immaturity and youth, but then proceeds to unload very serious and dark ideas in a very structured manner. The priests explains what hell feels like and why it's terrible in vivid, graphic detail. This is serious talk for mature and serious people. When reading this section for the first time it was first confusing and then startling to see what young children are being fed by the church. It is no doubt to instill a fear of sin in them, and as we see, it definitely leaves a mark on Stephen.
I think a big part of Stephen’s connection with religion was marred when he was trying to be forced into believing by scare tactics that the priests used on him and his fellow classmates. Chapter three I think is the most intense in the book specifically because of the sermon you mentioned, and I think in this chapter we see one of the reasons he really struggles with religion is because he associates anything not connected to the Church and popular thought as hell-worthy, and he’s obviously very frightened of going to hell. But he also doesn’t want to do what people expect of him, and he wants to be his own person, so he struggles with that.
ReplyDeleteI was a little confused by this section. Stephen had known about hell and sin before-- he had been terrified of it as a child-- but somehow just disregarded it till he was reminded by the sermon. I would have thought that he had given some thought to it and come to a similar agnostic, this-life-is-worth-it point of view, but it seems that he just pushed the whole thing out of his mind. As soon as the sermon begins, he's all ears. (Like at the Christmas dinner table) Stephen doesn't miss a word of the dialogue. It even continues in his own head for a little, sounding almost exactly like the words of the priest, but lacking little dashes at the beginnings of the paragraphs. He's terrified (again) by something that he knew all along; it seems strange.
ReplyDeleteYour closing reference to the sermon "leaving its mark on Stephen" aptly reflects the overwhelmingly physical metaphors that the priest uses to describe for the children the metaphysical or spiritual torments of hell: one of Joyce's implicit critiques here, perhaps, is that the argument in favor of religious devotion is made with the same basic coercive threat of corporal punishment as Father Dolan promising to come back tomorrow and flog any boy that "needs" it. God is presented as one big punisher--Stephen might believe that his lightness of spirit at the end of the chapter is a result of his absolution and confession, but Joyce reminds us that it's also the relief of a kid who's just escaped a beating (an eternal, impossibly tortuous one!).
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