A Victim of Idealism
...atholic, the only appropriate way to respect a girl is to worship her like a goddess. And she is as important as the sacred object of the church. He believes that being Catholic is being good, and the “drunken men, the bargaining women, and the curse of labors…” in the market are probably not Catholic, and they do not show good characters. Personally, he doesn’t want to associate himself with them, as he describes them as “a throng of foes” and their voices are “noises.” In addition, he doesn’t want his beloved goddess to be near them either, as he “bore [his] chalice safely through” them. But the word “confused” indicates that he is not so innocent of a good Catholic boy; he is holding back from grasping his true feeling of his affection. “[His] body…like a harp and her words and gestures… like fingers running upon the wires” seems like a holy experience accompanied by the harp’s soft melody, but the pleasure of “her fingers running upon” him is the focus. Unfortunately, he fails to disguise the physical attraction towards her in a religious manner and lets us see his true color. The emphasis on the symbolic visual details in paragraph six further argues that he has undeniable sexual desire towards the girl that he pretends to worship. On a seemingly normal rainy night, he “…heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below [him].” The visual image subtly hints that he wants to picture himself losing virginity to the girl that he admires. But having impure thoughts is not a good conduct for a Catholic; ironically, he denies his emerging feeling and quickly “thank[s]” God for letting him “see so little” of the truth about himself. Through the boy’s confession that “all [his] senses seem[s] to desire to veil themselves,” he wants us to believe that his senses have minds of their own, and he doesn’t have any direct relation to what they are doing. However, the word “seem[s]” displays a p...