tures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin." He wants to be loved, but the nearest thing he can find is prostitution. In the aftermath of this encounter and the numerous subsequent encounters, a feeling of guilt and even more pronounced loneliness begins to invade Stephen's being. Chapter Three represents the turning point of the novel, for here Stephen turns his life around. After the sermon on sin and hell, Stephen examines his soul and sees the shape it is in, wondering, "Why was he kneeling there like a child saying his evening prayers? To be alone with his soul, to examine his conscience, to meet his sins face to face, to recall their times and manners and circumstances, to weep over them." Religion pushes its way suddenly and unexpectedly back into Stephen's life. After his confession at the end of Chapter Three, he begins to lead a life nearly as devout as that of his Jesuit teachers and mentors. Even as he leads this life, however, shades of his former self are obliquely evident through statements such as, "This idea had a perilous attraction for his mind now that he felt his soul beset once again by the insistent voices of the flesh which began to murmur to him again during his prayers and meditations." Here it is evident that, even as his life becomes more and more devout, he can never lead the perfect and sinless life of the Jesuit. The offer of a position as a priest is met by memories of his childhood at Clongowes and thoughts such as, "He wondered how he would pass the first night in the ...
