Bound up in Stephen's "personal history" are his lingering belief in spirituality, his hope for Miltonic salvation for his mother (in spite of his refusal to pray at her deathbed), his memory (tinged with sarcasm) of holier times spent in the library of Saint Geneviere in Paris (protected from the free-living life of sin outside the library walls), and, especially, the riddle of the fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. The "poor soul" whose time it is to "go to heaven" is Mrs. Dedalus, and a religious interpretation of the riddle finds support in the next chapter when Stephen wonders if the dog on the beach, Tatters, is digging in the sand for his grandmother. Just before starting to dig, Tatters sniffs the bloated carcass of a dead dog, which has already been associated with the dog-God symbolism of Ulysses by the expression "dogsbody" in "Telemachus."
Even in Stephen's interview with the sniveling Cyril Sargent, we realize how Stephen is doomed to relive the past, the real nightmare of history, and how the past always leads back to his mother. In Cyril, Stephen sees himself as he was at Clongowes: weak-eyed, insecure, misunderstood, trembling, and put upon by the school disciplinarian. But, Stephen reasons, Cyril's mother must have loved him, and this thought leads once again to a memory of the pervasive odor of "rosewood and wetted ashes" that accompanied Mrs. Dedalus's last days.
Stephen's problems have taken a toll on him, and Joyce implies a good deal about his young but tired protagonist by giving us a high selectivity of important details. For example, Stephen's class is not only unruly but is also filled with cheaters; even the teacher, he himself, "cheats," and, in fact, Stephen does not care if his students cheat or not. Stephen has to glance as his "gorescarred" book (Joyce's term for Stephen's military history book) to note the place, Asculum, of Pyrrhus's 279 B.C. victory against the Romans; and the student Talbot haltingly reads parts of Lycidas from a secreted text. Stephen is aware of Talbot's subterfuge, for he sarcastically tells him to "turn over" the page after Talbot inadvertently repeats the phrase "Through the dear might . . . .
