In the famous “Hellfire sermon” scene, young Stephen is terrified into religious devotion. But his mother’s quiet weeping when he confesses his sins is more powerful than any priest’s thunder. She doesn’t need to speak; her disappointment is a gravitational field. The novel’s triumph is Stephen’s flight: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe... freely and openly I declare myself a heretic.” He chooses art over her love. But Joyce ends not with liberation, but with the cold, aching space where her voice used to be. The mother remains the unwritten chapter he can never close.

Many works highlight the "primal bond" of maternal love as a source of survival against extraordinary odds.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) remains the definitive cinematic study of a "psychotic" mother-son dynamic, where Norman Bates’ desire to both be with and become his mother leads to tragic consequences.