Stephen's dilemma is defined by Joyce's use of several analogues: (1) Stephen's Uncle Richie sits in bed, calls for whiskey, and "drones bars" from Verdi's Il Trovatore; in this opera, the faithful Ferrando is a contrast to the deceiver Mulligan;
(2) Jonathan Swift, Stephen feels, was driven mad by the unappreciative rabble and was led to venerate his famous horses in Part IV of Gulliver's Travels, the Houyhnhnms; and (3) Kevin Egan, the Fenian whose plans led to disaster; even today, he waits as an exiled "wild goose" in Paris for the resurrection of his native Ireland while trying to enlist assistance for his ideas of revolution.
The original of Kevin Egan, one should note, was Joseph Casey, an Irish Nationalist, who, in 1867, was involved in a tragic attempt to free several Fenians from Clerkenwell Prison in London by using gunpowder. Stephen thinks of Egan (whom he met in Paris) several times in the episode, and Egan fits into several major motifs of Ulysses. He is an example of a leader who is abandoned and forgotten by the Irish people. His brand of patriotism, the cause for which he tries to enlist Stephen's help, is a temptation that Stephen must avoid if he is to become a detached, objective artist. In Paris, Egan told Stephen tales of disguise and wild escapes, appropriate to this episode ("Proteus"), which deals with illusion. Finally, Kevin Egan fits into the father theme of Ulysses, when he tells Stephen to find Patrice, his son, and let him know that Stephen saw him (Kevin Egan). Patrice is Egan's son by his estranged French wife, and one thinks, in contrast, of the less than febrile passion between Bloom and Molly.
It is no wonder, then, that one of the major analogues for Stephen's plight is the via crucis. Two shirts are "crucified" on a clothesline, and in the last paragraph of the episode the spars of the three-master ship, the Rosevean, recall Christ's death between two thieves, only one of whom was saved.
Change, to Stephen, is a crucifixion, for he must learn to become mature or be drowned by life, to balance the conflicting forces that define him. As a boy, he was full of dreams and secure, despite belonging to a poor family; he accepted his church's teachings and was scholastically successful, confident of his ability to write fine poetry. Now, after living in Paris, a sojourn that accentuated tendencies towards blasphemy and skepticism which had been present in his personality for a long time, he feels lost. Cut off from the old verities, yet unable to slip into Mulligan's glib, atheistic cynicism, Stephen finds himself defenseless and no longer possessed of a belief in the spontaneity of his genius; he must now walk his deeply troubled Way of the Cross.
