In "The Wandering Rocks," Joyce uses his "false clues" and his ironic contrasts or juxtapositionings to express a human theme, and his art becomes a means of creating a grand Chaucerian pilgrimage. As do many great artists, Joyce accepts people largely as they are, and "The Wandering Rocks" forms his panorama of Dublin's city dwellers with all their warts. The point of view in "The Wandering Rocks" is naturalism tinged with compassion. For example, though Father Conmee may be a bit condescending, he does truly care for people, in particular about those outside of the Catholic faith who may die in "invincible ignorance" and never gain heaven; he may like "cheerful decorum," but he is nonetheless concerned about the plight of the "African mission" and about the dark souls of natives who will never receive "baptism of water . . . ." And Father Conmee can only bless the one-legged sailor because, by the rules of his order, he has taken a vow of poverty; he does not have money to spare for the beggar. As another example of Joyce's attitude toward Dubliners, note that in the ninth section, M'Coy's "putdown" of Lenehan is deftly carried out and, because of its understatement, it realistically portrays the reactions of a jokester who fails and his slightly stiff listener. Lenehan tells of taking liberties with Molly (with her "milky way") during an evening in 1894 while Bloom was pointing out the constellations of the stars as the group of old friends returned from the "big spread out at Glencree reformatory. . . ." Taken aback by M'Coy's cool response to his off-color anecdote, Lenehan is forced to admit about Bloom: "He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is. . . . There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom."
Joyce's compassion for the Dubliners in "The Wandering Rocks" is perhaps most evident in his family portraits, and it is unfortunate that some critics tend to overemphasize the humorous side of the episode; in it, Joyce incorporated several unforgettably moving scenes. just a few of these include (1) Maggy Dedalus's telling her hungry sisters that the pawn shop would not accept Stephen's books, as well as her dishing out "yellow thick" pea soup to them (begged from a nun), and then her correcting her sister Boody, who has bitterly called Simon "our father who art not in heaven"; (2) the drunken Simon trying to convince Dilly that he has no money to give her to buy some food for the family, then castigating her for not standing up straight, while Dilly pleads, "Give it up, father. . . . All the people are looking at you"; and (3) Dilly's purchase of a bit of hope in the midst of all the family squalor, Chardenal's French Primer (Stephen thinks, "I told her of Paris."), which leads Stephen to see his sister as drowning metaphorically, just as his mother did in fact (in her own green bile).
With great artistry, Joyce provides the antidote to possible sentimentality by his depiction of Haines, Mulligan, and (later) Master Patrick Dignam, son of the deceased. The priggish Haines has decided that Stephen suffers from a "fixed idea," an obsession; Mulligan plays along with his facile companion, telling him that it was the Church that ruined Stephen's mind with its doctrine of hellfire. Haines agrees, then ruminates that the ancient Celtic tradition does not admit of an afterlife of punishment. The obnoxious little Patrick Dignam tries as hard as he can to feel some compassion for his dead father, but he can think seriously only that he may get his name in the paper, that he will have a vacation from school, and that he might be lionized by his classmates for a time. And, despite everything, he just cannot get his obstreperous shirt collar to stay down!
