Faubourg Saint Patrice - ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University

(15.77,84,98). "I saw a stream of water welling forth from the right of the temple.
Alleluia. And all among them came to that water. And they are made whole" (Gifford
453). The association of Nighttown with the altar, and Georgina Johnson with the God
of the Catholic mass is, on the narrative level, just another representation of Stephen's
blasphemous sacerdotal humor; more significantly, however, it reveals Stephen's attempt
to extinguish his guilt by mocking those powers which formed his consciousness ". This
image also recalls Stephen's youthful vision preceding his initial encounter with a
prostitute, which first occurred during Stephen's youthful spiritual struggle: "The yellow
gasflames arose before his troubled vision against the vapory sky, burning as if before an
altar" (A Portrait 95).
In the heat of Stephen's alcohol and hunger induced hallucination in "Circe,"
Mulligan reappears in jester's dress to resume his taunting of Stephen about the death of
his mother: "The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody." (15.4178) This
image stimulates a confrontation between Stephen and his mother, again connecting her
with his lost faith and evoking emotions of fright, remorse, horror, and rage (15.4187,
4222). Ironically, this hallucination is, perhaps, the most impressive and artistically
pleasing creation of Stephen's aesthetic mind in Ulysses. The ghost of May Dedalus,
with parallels to the ghost of prince Hamlet's father, warns Stephen: "I pray for you in
my other world . . . Beware God's hand!" and then begins a series of prayers for
Stephen's wayward soul (15.420-44240). Unable to face the self-created mental image
of his suffering mother, Stephen turns his wrath against God, as he did earlier in
"Telemachus": "The ghoul! Hyenal. . .His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer!
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