Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

glasses. Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. . . Any boy want flogging? Broke
his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye" (15.3628-9,3666-3672).
Clearly, the impact of this youthful experience--the punishment, guilt, and injustice which
he associated with authority--remains an obsession firmly rooted in Stephen's
consciousness.
Moreover, this youthful fear of physical assault by authority figures is later
combined with Stephen's spiritual guilt which reaches a nadir after the horrific imagery of
Father Arnell's retreat sermon (A Portrait 116-23). Playing on the ultimate fears of his
youthful audience, Father Arnell, "forming a frail cage" with his fingertips, carefully
constructs a terrifying description of hell by drawing on the torture of each of the
physical senses and thus creating a deep and lasting image in the memories of the youths.
Although the priest stresses that the spiritual pain of hell is "by far the greatest," his
sermon sadistically focuses on the physical aspects of everlasting damnation. Stephen is
so deeply affected by both the sermon's horrifying message and his subsequent guilt that
he becomes physically ill: "He felt only an ache of the soul and body, his whole being,
memory, will, understanding, flesh, benumbed and weary" (A Portrait 124). Reminded
of God's omniscience by the sermon, Stephen realizes that his most secret thoughts and
actions are clearly visible under the ever-present surveillance of the Catholic Panopticon:
Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in
sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the
tabernacle itself while his soul within was a living mask of corruption.
How came it that God had not struck him dead? The leprous company of
his sins closed about him, breathing upon him, bending over him from all
sides. He strove to forget them in an act of prayer, huddling his limbs
closer together and bending down his eyelids: but the senses of his soul
would not be bound and, though his ears were shut fast, he saw the places
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