The opening chapter begins with Stephen Daedalus" early childhood. The plot progresses, obscured by the Stephen's not fully formed perception of his world. He describes his environment and the people in it with touches of baby talk, colloquialisms and shadowy, visceral imagery.
His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt (4).
The story seems to jump a few years abruptly and Stephen is suddenly at his first days at Clonglowes boarding school. The language changes again to correlate with his change in age. It is at this time Stephen's sensitivity is more clearly developed. Often, Stephen drifts from reality and the fantasies of being at home with his family away from the dreary atmosphere of the school, "it would be nice to lie on the hearthrug before the fire, leaning his head upon his hands he shivered as if he had cold slimy water next to his skin it was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch (6)".
B: (ii) Social & Political Ideas Relevant to our Society.
It is in the first chapter that the reader gets a glimpse of the hostile political and religious situation in the background of the story. Stephen declares, " when they are grown up he was going to marry Eileen (3)" a neighbor girl. This statement outrages Dante, the nanny, because Eileen Vance is a protestant and the Daedalus are staunch Catholics. Stephen is then forced to apologize as Dante cries, "if not the eagles will come and pull out his eyes (4)." The aspect of social unrest is illustrated further at Christmas dinner a few years later. It is with a passionate argument between Stephen's father and several family members that the political climate is developed and Stephen is rudely brought into the adult world. After this argument, Stephen's speech and perceptions become more adult, more understood.