How to Write a Love Letter

    After unsuccessful in his attempts to kiss the girl he had met the night before, Stephen attempts to write a love letter to her, during the reader gets the full effect of Stephen’ stream of consciousness.  At the beginning and ending of the letter, Stephen the initial letters of the Jesuits “From force of habit” (61).  This initially displays that Stephen may show some signs of carelessness while writing the letter, but I think the reader learns more about this later on in the paragraph.  So after writing the initials, Stephen decides to write E--- C--- because “He had seen similar titles in the collected poems of Lord Byron” (61).  This portrays that Stephen is familiar with the love poems of Lord Byron and probably views himself as the main protagonist in Byron’s poems trying to woo the girls just as Stephen imagines the same as Count of Monte Cristo.  The choice of Stephen to imitate Lord Byron also reflects the literary progress Stephen has made because as a young boy he is only able to imitate the easy details of great poets and authors and does not have his own style yet.  

   He then starts to daydream and sees himself writing a poem on the back of one of his father’s second moiety notices, which suggests that Stephen is still disgruntled about his family’s loss of financial security.  But instead of writing a poem, he writes the names of some of his classmates, and then he “thinks himself into confidence” (61).  Instead of writing his love poem for the girl, Stephen starts writing the name of some of his classmates, and with the knowledge that Stephen struggles with his sexual orientation, this might suggest that he instead wishes to write a love letter to one of them instead.  This is where the writing of the Jesuit initials comes back because Stephen is then encouraged after this to continue on with his poem.  The fact that the initials surrounds the poem could suggest that Stephen might be writing the poem not because he truly wants the girl, but because he feels pressure to conform to social norms and define his sexual orientation.  This might further gain traction since he is not able to vividly describe the scene.  The one thing I was not able to make out through this interpretation was the “undefined sorrow” (62) that Stephen mentions as they kiss goodbye.  Could this mean my interpretation is wrong or possibly that the undefined sorrow was Stephen’s way of describing that he felt something was wrong?