Stephen's feelings of loneliness increase as he thinks of the day when his parents said good-bye to him, leaving him helpless in the threatening maze of his new life at Clongowes, where he felt "caught in the whirl of a scrimmage . . . fearful of the flashing eyes and muddy boots . . ." He soon realizes that he can momentarily escape the cruel realities of school life by contemplating things which he finds beautiful and, later, re-creating them with words.
For example, when reflecting on the lighted castle, Stephen remarks, "It was like something in a book." Here, Stephen reveals an early insight into the nature of creativity: he can translate something physical into artistic form. He not only begins to value words, but he also realizes that a particular arrangement of words makes the "nice sentences in Doctor Cornwell's Spelling Book" seem "like poetry." Stephen is already a young artist. This scene plays an important part in Joyce's revelation of Stephen's ultimate escape from a humdrum, priest-ridden life.
Suddenly, Stephen's artistic reverie is interrupted by real life, and we are reminded that although Stephen may be artistic, he is still a little boy. Stephen precisely describes the disgusting details of being pushed into the "square ditch" by a bullying classmate, and, here, in addition to our responding to Stephen's description of the sensations he felt, we should be aware that the sudden shock of the cold, slimy [cesspool] water is heavily symbolic; the submersion into the cesspool is Stephen's crude baptism into an offensive and cruel world, a world which differs greatly from the warm, secure world of home. The contrast between these two worlds, as well as the contrast between a series of hot/cold images (hot is natural and therefore good; cold is unfeeling and therefore bad), sets up another catalogue of comparisons and conflicts which Stephen must try to resolve as he attempts to find his place in the new world of Clongowes.
