Soul Cleansing

Towards the end of our last class, Mr. Kennedy brought our attention to the scene where Stephen appears that he will break away from the Church because he feels that his soul is beyond fixing.  Mr. Kennedy focused on the lines, “It was his own soul going forth to experience, unfolding itself sin by sin, spreading abroad the balefire of its burning stars and folding back upon itself, fading slowly, quenching its own lights and fires.” (90).  This clearly shows that Stephen feels that he is doing damage to his soul through his sins.  He knows the dangers of doing this, but he feels that his sins are fueling themselves and cannot be stopped. 

After Stephen experiences the retreat, his perspective towards the salvation of his soul starts to change.  In a thought, while confessing his sins, that is very similar in structure to the previous statement, Stephen thinks that, “His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul festering and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice.  The last sins oozed forth sluggish, filthy” (126).  As Mr. Kennedy stated, this sentence structure is an important motif that comes up a few times in the novel.  While his soul is engulfed in sin in the first passage, this passage gives a picture of Stephen’s soul that has been mostly cleaned of the sins and has potential to either become filled with good or to return to a state of sin.  So with this scene set as the middle part of the book, it seems this is suppose to be the start of a new adventure for Stephen, in which he will ultimately have to choose, or forced into, one of these two states of the soul.

 Should we believe that Stephen wants to choose the good and righteous path because he truly wants to or because he is fearful of spending eternity in hell?  Also if the second option is true, does that speak more to Stephen as a person or the culture of the Church at the time?