A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Stephen’s encounter with the sex worker at the end of Chapter 2 explodes into a lifestyle of sexual licentiousness at the beginning of Chapter 3. The more often he visits these women, however, the more concerned Stephen becomes for the state of his soul. In the previous chapters, Stephen did not care about religion—in fact, he was primarily made aware of the hypocrisy of religious practitioners, particularly amongst his relatives. Though Catholic practices were embedded into his upbringing, he merely went through the motions. Now, however, Stephen has a personal reason for caring. This chapter explores the theme of Struggling Spirituality in depth as Stephen grapples with his out-of-control desires, and the realization that his lust has blossomed into a variety of other “sins.”

Stephen becomes obsessed with the idea of sin, taught to him by his mother and the Jesuit priests at his school. Stephen is caught in an intellectual and moral conundrum. Paying for sex is physically pleasurable, but he fears it is not moral. If it is not moral, then he is sinning. His nebulous differentiation between himself and the anonymized person who was committing these sins no longer holds up, as he cannot convince himself that this is a convincing trick in a world where God is so powerful. While he could not force himself to pray to God over something for which he felt no remorse, he revisits the idea of prayer and the fears of damnation once he begins to grow concerned about his own behavior.

Stephen embarks on an attempt to rationalize and understand sin and religion, and these thoughts engulf his entire waking life. In a structural sense, so much of Chapter 3 is dedicated to a long sermon about the nature of hell because Stephen himself is engrossed in the subject. The content of the chapter mirrors Stephen’s emotional state and the depth of his obsession. He hangs on every one of the priest’s words and each lurid description of the horrors of hell only makes his tortured mind all the more focused.

Though Stephen is no longer convinced by the anonymity of his nighttime sins, the adults around him are not suspicious. The priests at the school praise Stephen for his religiosity. He is regarded as one of the most mature and devout students at the school and other students are told to be more like Stephen. This praise only makes Stephen feel worse. Not only is he a sinner, but he is also pretending to be a good man. He is lying to the world through his failure to confess. In a way, Stephen has created another anonymized version of himself, which complicates his feelings of Identity. The Stephen that is praised by the priests is not the true Stephen. The real Stephen wanders the streets of Dublin at night, commits many sins, and then lies to the world about his true nature.

This chapter also builds the theme of Art, Language, and Liberation because, through this deceit, Stephen is exercising his talents as an artist. He feels he is creating a character and writing him into the world, a character that is so convincing that the real Stephen is able to use him as a shield for his sins. Stephen is a writer, creating a piece of fiction; but where his previous poems, daydreams, and games of pretend lent him a sense of freedom, this act of creation only makes him feel ashamed. He has not yet found a way to use his talents as an artist in a satisfying manner. On top of that, the images he conjures up during the sermons about hell and damnation are vivid and fantastical, yet another self-tormenting manifestation of his artistic mind.

The third sermon delivered by the priest warns the students about the perils of a godless world. By this point, Stephen already considers himself to be damned to an eternity in hell. He imagines himself suffering, denied the grace of God because he could not keep his sexual urges in check. The agonizing three days spent on the retreat plunge Stephen into a religious and existential crisis. Rather than reaffirm and deepen his religious conviction, however, the sermons have only served to lay the foundation for Stephen’s denial of religion. In later chapters, Stephen will renounce his faith in God. The sermon about a godless world becomes, for Stephen, a reality. He is given a vision of hell, but that vision then becomes his existence.

In a seemingly final act of belief, Stephen decides that he must confess his sins. Though he has spent days and weeks worrying about the burden of sin, the actual confession is over quickly, and he is given small acts of penance to perform. The confession is simple and easy, making a mockery of the emotional torment to which Stephen has subjected himself. As an imaginative and artistic boy, Stephen created a world in which he could torture himself. This use of fiction as, once again, a form of self-flagellation foreshadows Stephen’s emergence as an artist, as well as his attempts to use fiction as a form of atonement. The confession is a necessary act, both in the sense that it relieves Stephen from his immediate burden of shame and also demonstrates to him that religion is just another hollow institution that is no match for his own powers of imagination.