Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

Mulligan perceptively reveals Stephen's Catholic "supersaturation"--his inability to either
extinguish his Jesuit dressage or escape from the metaphorical Panopticon. Stephen also
recognizes his inability to free himself from these spiritual bonds and declares with "grim
displeasure" to Haines: "You behold in me. . .a horrible example of free thought"
(1.625-6).
The conflict between Buck Mulligan, the priest of science and purveyor of
materialism, and Stephen, the "poet-priest" and purveyor of the spirit, reflects the two
polar forces which struggle to capture the cultural consciousness of Ireland. As Stanley
Sultan describes: "Malachi Mulligan, prophet of the new religion, and, to its followers,
the Irish people, priest and king, has dispossessed the poet-prophet of Irish tradition"
(40). This conflict is unfolded early, as Stephen watches the dairy woman's
obsequiousness towards Mulligan: "Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her
old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she
slights" (1.418-9). On the narrative level, Mulligan will usurp Stephen's physical position
in Martello tower; more significantly, Mulligan represents those forces which usurp
Stephen's self-ordained position as the harbinger of a new consciousness to the Irish
people. While Mulligan calls on his roommate to help "Hellenize" Ireland through a
collusion of Mulligan's science and Stephen's art, Stephen recognizes their diametrical
visions of life and, as will be demonstrated, eventually rejects his heretical roommate.
Nevertheless, Joyce introduces Mulligan into key sections of the novel to ridicule
Stephen, mock his literary theories, and. most significantly, stimulate his guilt.
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