When the novel opens, we are in the mind of a child; fragmented lines from a nursery story are intertwined with sensations and associations of feeling, touching, hearing, and smelling. Joyce takes us inside the mind of a child in order to show us how a child records and responds to the world around him. By carefully choosing language and syntax, Joyce enables us to share what is possibly the earliest childhood memory of the novel's hero—Stephen Dedalus.
Stephen is only three years old when he begins to identify himself with the physical world, with members of his family, and with the sensual world of language; he remembers his father's hairy face, his mother's sweet smell, the uncomfortable experience of wetting the bed, and certain special and fanciful words, such as "baby tuckoo" and "moocow." It was a good time, he says, meaning that he felt safe and secure from harm. Significantly, his favorite song is about wild roses—not tamed, cultivated roses, but wild roses. His taste for rebellion and freedom has already budded.
Stephen’s next memory occurs about three years later, when he attempts to compete athletically with a group of rowdy schoolmates at Clongowes Wood College, the Jesuit boarding school which he attends. By comparison with the other boys, Stephen is small and weak, and suffers from poor vision and painful homesickness. During these miserable days, he comforts himself with thoughts of home. As he thinks about these things, it is clear that Stephen is a lonely, sensitive young boy, one who loves learning and relies on the strength he receives from saying his evening prayers.
Stephen's first crisis at Clongowes occurs when Wells, a bullying classmate, pushes Stephen into the square ditch (a cesspool), causing him to be taken to the school infirmary to recover from a fever. While there, Stephen meets Athy, the likeable son of a racehorse owner; Athy confides to Stephen that he too has an unusual name. While Stephen is in the infirmary, he also meets the somewhat sad but compassionate cleric Brother Michael, who cares for sick boys and makes them feel less isolated by reading them the news in the daily paper.
Although Stephen feels depressed by his illness, he comforts himself by melodramatically imagining the beauty of his own burial ceremony and Wells' great remorse for having caused Stephen’s unfortunate death. Then Stephen falls into a fitful sleep; he is lulled by "waves" of light, the sounds of imaginary sea waves, and the words which Brother Michael is reading about the death of Charles Stewart Parnell, the young, romantic Irish hero.
Parnell's death becomes more significant in the following scene, when Stephen returns home to celebrate Christmas. At the Christmas dinner are Stephen's parents (Mary and Simon), John Casey (a friend of Simon’s), Stephen’s greatuncle Charles, and Stephen’s old nurse, Dante Riordan. Stephen is particularly excited because for the first time in his life, he is sitting at the table with the adults.
The joy of the occasion is soon interrupted, however, by an argument about the Catholic Church's role in politics and its attitude toward the followers of the late Irish Nationalist, Charles Stewart Parnell.
Casey, a staunch supporter of Parnell's cause, defends Parnell against the injustices committed against him and his cause by the Irish people and by the Catholic Church. According to Casey, the Church hounded Parnell into his grave. The argument naturally includes mention of Parnell's highly publicized love affair with a married woman, Kitty O'Shea, and Dante Riordan vehemently defends the Church's censure of Parnell's involvement with Kitty. Casey says that because the Church interfered with secular matters, it thereby ended a political career which had seemed to promise Home Rule for Ireland.
The argument escalates with an exchange of insults and concludes with Dante's triumphantly shouting, "We crushed him [Parnell] to death!" She slams the door, leaving Simon and Casey weeping over the loss of their beloved hero.
The next scene opens with Stephen back at Clongowes, overhearing a conversation about the punishment awaiting some students who stole some altar wine from the sacristy. Thinking about the dark, silent sacristy and sacred things in general, Stephen suddenly envisions Eileen Vance, a young girl with hands like ivory, so smooth that they remind him of two worshipful phrases that he repeats during the Litany to the Blessed Virgin—"Tower of Ivory" and "House of Gold." Suddenly, Stephen’s musings are interrupted by a call to class.
During Father Arnall's Latin lesson, Father Dolan, the prefect of studies, who wields the menacing pandybat in search of "lazy idle little loafers," appears. Dolan notices that Fleming and Stephen are not doing their lessons. After disciplining Fleming, Dolan approaches Stephen, who explains that he has been excused temporarily from his assignments because he broke his glasses.
Refusing to believe that Stephen broke them accidentally, the cynical, sadistic Dolan commands the boy to put out his hands for "pandying." This punishment, according to Dolan, is demanded for idleness and schoolboy tricks. Afterward, Stephen feels humiliated and angered by the unjust cruelty. His classmates are angered too; they believe that Stephen should report the prefect's injustice to the rector of the school.
Stephen briefly considers the consequences of such a bold action; then he sets out, following the winding corridors that lead to "the castle." He confronts the rector with the truth about the broken glasses, and, to Stephen’s amazement, the rector, Father Conmee, is both sympathetic and kind; he promises to resolve the situation with Father Dolan on Stephen’s behalf. Comforted and exhilarated by the results of the meeting, Stephen rushes from the gloomy corridors of the castle to be greeted by his classmates as a leader and a hero. They lock hands and lift him heavenward. Metaphorically, Stephen is flying, momentarily free of fear and constraint.
