A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Chapter 1, Part 2 Summary & Analysis

The next scene takes place in Clongowes Wood College, where a slightly older Stephen has recently begun his schooling. Stephen plays football (soccer) on the playground with the other boys, feeling cold, weak, and shy. The other boys seem rough and strong. One of them mocks Stephen’s name and his father’s job. The boys’ roughness makes Stephen think of his kindly mother and father. He is tired of running around in the cold, and he thinks of reading cozily in study hall.

The cold of the day reminds Stephen that a classmate pushed him into a cold wet ditch the day before. The cold also reminds him of his mother’s warm fireplace and of Dante’s interesting stories. Now the schoolboys are called inside. One boy calls a classmate named Simon Moonan a ‘suck,’ a teacher’s pet, and the word reminds Stephen of the eerie sound of a flushing toilet. The memory of cold and hot water pipes in the bathroom makes him feel first cold and then hot, which he finds very strange.

Stephen walks to his arithmetic class. The class is divided into two teams, York and Lancaster. The boys on York wear badges with white roses, and the boys in Lancaster wear badges with red roses. Students that solve problems correctly win points for their respective teams. Stephen wants to do his best for York, but his academic rival Jack Lawton solves the problem first. Suddenly, he feels disinterested in the game and thinks intently of the beautiful colors of the silk roses and the prize cards.

After class, Stephen files with his classmates into the dining room. The food and the atmosphere are so bleak that he can’t bring himself to eat anything, though he does drink some tea. He notices dampness and colors everywhere he looks. The other boys are too different for him to understand them, and he feels homesick – a feeling he imagines as a sickness of the heart. He escapes from the unpleasant loud noise of the dining room by thinking of the pleasant sounds of a train.

Later, Stephen plays dominoes halfheartedly in the playroom and tries to hear the hissing of the gas pipes. In study hall, a globe that a boy named Fleming had colored green and purple reminds Stephen of Dante’s brushes. Stephen tries to study geography but becomes distracted by all the different names of the countries, and by the confusing vastness of the world. It’s odd, he thinks, that there exist many names for god but only one god. He remembers that Dante had torn the green from the Parnell brush recently because she decided that Parnell was a bad person. He understands that his family is divided along political lines, but he doesn’t know why.

The next morning, Stephen wakes up with a fever and stays in bed while the other boys dress. Wells, thinking he caused Stephen’s illness by throwing him in the ditch, apologizes and makes Stephen promise not to tell on him. A teacher comes to feel Stephen’s head, but the teacher’s cold hand makes Stephen think of the rats in the ditch. The teacher takes Stephen to the infirmary, where he thinks about death and his own funeral.

A kindly teacher named Brother Michael helps him get settled in, and a boy named Athy talks to him about political arguments at home and asks him to solve a silly riddle. Stephen thinks the reflections of the fire on the wall resemble waves, and he thinks the voices in the background might be the sound of waves. Suddenly he hears Brother Michael announce to a crowd of people that Parnell has died. The crowd begins to cry, and Stephen imagines Dante walking indifferently by.