False Images

Towards the very end of the novel, Stephen writes,

"Michael Robartes remembers forgotten beauty... presses in his arms the loveliness, which has long faded from the world. Not this. Not at all. I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world."

And yet, despite this conviction, for all his asserted perspectives on esthetics, there is the sense that Stephen still fears the reality he has come to believe in and adopt, not only for its potential lack of truth but the part of himself that continues to run contradictory to the perspectives he claims; the part of him that dwells on what should not be beautiful and the desires and consequences of the physical world. Despite his supposed contentedness alone and his asserted desire to discover and create beauty, he still longs to be discovered himself, dwelling on the girl and the idea of being beckoned into a house like Davin. Consequently, he is similarly hesitant to dismiss the potential of faith and religion completely. Stephen is, however, aware of this perpetual underlying self doubt which he symbolizes with the idea of the crocodile in the mud and the old man with the red eyes, writing, "It is with him I must struggle all through night till day come, till he or I lie dead..."

Another specific scene captures the essence of Stephen's residual fear and doubt. Before his conversation with Cranly, Stephen contemplates the girl and the dusk she passes through, remembering incorrectly, the line, "Darkness falls from the air." Initially, he feels a "trembling joy" but then begins to contemplate the reason behind the sensation, and as he does, concludes that the feeling is associated with physical desire which he does not want to "corrupt" his perception of her with. He wonders, "Could his mind then not trust itself?" and later thinks, "All the images it awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born of the sweat of sloth." In his conversation with Lynch, Stephen seems to emphasize the significance of the mind and soul above all as they are the sources of transcendence and control necessary to an artist and life; the soul must learn to take flight and avoid the "nets" wishing to delude it. In this moment, however, Stephen faces the possibility that he cannot trust his mind, may not possess any control over it or the agency involved in creating. Instead, he wonders if it is possible that what he creates are illusions (vermin), whether his art can ever get close to the truth, and if it is possible he lives in just as much delusion as the ideologies of others he has come to reject. This self awareness, however, is what allows Stephen to go out into the world simultaneously wandering lost yet with direction, the dreaded "abandon" he mentioned to Lynch and the forging of his own path.