This emotionally traumatic Christmas dinner, the climax of Chapter I, marks the beginning of Stephen's loss of innocence. Increasingly, Stephen will begin to view the world with more cynicism and apathy, and before long, he will begin to expect disillusionment in areas of life which he once held sacred. Such is the case when he returns to school and the other children seem to be "smaller and farther away" than they did before. He listens to the fears of his classmates as they discuss the fate of the boys accused of stealing wine from the sacristy, but the details of the sacrilege no longer seem to shock him. Instead, Stephen tries to make sense of his new perspective by relying on the familiar rhythms of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. For the first time, he begins to examine the actual meaning of the words which he has routinely, unthinkingly, repeated for years. He begins to understand the words not so much for their piety, but for their beauty as art.
In contrast to Stephen's discovering the beauty of the words in the Litany, Joyce juxtaposes the unfair, cruel reality of the Catholic Church, represented by Father Dolan. In careful detail, Joyce re-creates the sound and the motion of Father Dolan's pandybat, as well as the feelings associated with being smacked with the pandybat. Joyce is foreshadowing here what will eventually happen to Stephen, and, as a result, we will more deeply share Stephen's painful, unjust punishment.
Initially, of course, Stephen never suspects the potential cruelty of Father Dolan. Stephen has suffered from the cruelty of his classmates — specifically, he was pushed in the filthy ditch of water and, later, a classmate caused him to break his glasses on the cinderpath — but Stephen has yet to experience injustice from a cleric, a man who is supposed to represent the kindness and mercy of the Catholic faith. Ironically, the sadistic Father Dolan not only fails to hear the boy's "confession" of innocence, but he also oversteps his station by taking pleasure in paddling Stephen mercilessly in front of the class.
Momentarily, Stephen's faith seems to fail him, but he finds a solution to the injustice he has suffered in the chorus of classmates as they cry out in classical echoes of Roman crowds demanding democratic justice. Stephen's solution seems clear: he knows that he must visit the school's rector in order to clear his good name and report Father Dolan's injustice.
