A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST SA YOUNG MAN:

KEY FACTS:
 When Written: 1905 and 1914
 Where Written: Dublin and Trieste
 Literary Period: Modernism
 Genre: Kunstler roman, a narrative of an artist’s youth and maturation.
 Setting: Dublin, Ireland, in the late 19th century.
 Point of View: Third-person limited omniscient

AUTHOR:
Portrait of the Artist is largely autobiographical: Stephen’s life corresponds in most details to
Joyce’s. Like Stephen, he was born in Dublin to a merry, profligate father and devout Catholic
mother, the eldest of ten surviving children; like his fictional counterpart, he attended Longbows
Wood College, Belvedere College, and University College Dublin. During college, Joyce began
to publish literary reviews, poems, and plays. After graduating in 1902 he briefly studied
medicine in Paris; he returned to Dublin some months later to attend his mother’s funeral. At this
time, he tried unsuccessfully to publish shorter, earlier versions of Portrait under the names
of Portrait of the Artist and Stephen Hero. In 1904 he met Nora Barnacle, who he married and
who served as an inspiration and a model for many aspects of Joyce’s fiction. The couple spent
many years wandering around Europe in near-poverty, settling eventually in Zurich and Paris.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man was published in 1916. During the years while James
Joyce was writing the novel, he had hard times. His mother died in 1903. Also he had financial
problems. During those years The World war II started and it may have some influence on the
novel. There was one more thing – his religion. Like Stephen in his novel, James Joyce was
under the religious pressure.
He started writing a naturalistic novel in 1904. That is a year after his mother’s death. Joyce
wrote Stephen Hero first but then thought that it lacked artistic control. That is why he rewrote it
in five chapters under a title – A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. It was his first novel. The
novel was based on the events of his own life. We can see Joyce himself in his character –
Stephen Dedalus.

TITLE:
This title works on a few levels. It is a portrait of an artist. It is about the artist James Joyce
himself. The title places the book in a certain tradition of self-portraits. Many famous painters
and sculptors created "Portrait(s) of the Artist(s);" in calling his book by this title, Joyce
compares writing to the fine arts.

INTRODUCTION:
The novel is all about the life of a young man called Stephen Dedalus. The book starts with
Stephen’s memories about his childhood. Stephen wants to be an artist from an early age. But
there are many obstacles in his life. His family has financial problems. Also there are the
limitations of his religion, his culture and his family. Stephen tries to be a good religious person
for a short time but then he fails. After a long time he realizes that he wants to be free of all
limitations. In the end he decides to follow his dreams and leaves his country to be a successful
artist but not a priest.
Actually the novel is the mirror to James Joyce own life. Joyce attended the school with the same
name in the novel. (Clongowes Wood College) The novel’s main character – Stephen’s family
has financial problems because of his father. Joyce’s family had financial problems and the
reason was his father. Joyce took the events from his real life. Joyce’s family had to move to
other cities several times. In the novel we can see that it happens to Stephan’s family. Also Joyce
left Ireland for a new life. So does Stephen in the novel.
James Joyce perfected his style stream-of-consciousness with the novel. He was doubtless one of
the best writers of his time. His novel is the autobiographical one. He had hard times in his life
and he actually wrote about his life but under a different name. The novel can be classified as
both a Kunstler roman (German, meaning a novel about an artist) and Bildungsroman (German,
meaning a novel of development or education). We need to understand these two terms before
starting to read the novel itself.

PLOT SUMMARY:
The novel’s first scene shows an infant Stephen listening to his father’s nonsense fairy tale.
Stephen’s thoughts and memories careen wildly – from a woman that sells candy on the street, to
his mother’s warm smell, to his governess Dante’s brushes, to his neighbor Eileen. In the next
scene, an older Stephen is in his first year of school at Clongowes; he is playing outside with the
other boys and longing for the warmth and peace of study hall. He wakes up with a cold the next
day and spends some time in the infirmary, where he hears that the Irish nationalist Parnell has
died.
A few months later, Stephen comes home for the winter holidays. He listens to his family having
a bitter argument about Parnell and the Catholic Church. When he returns to school, he finds out
to his bewilderment that two of his classmates were caught doing something sexual with
upperclassmen. A boy had broken his glasses, and a teacher beats him unjustly during one of his
classes for sitting out. Stephen complains to the rector, who takes Stephen's side, and Stephen is
cheered by his schoolmates.
We rejoin Stephen some years later. He spends a summer in Blackrock, exploring the
neighborhood with his friend Aubrey, reading The Count of Monte Christo, and restlessly
wandering the streets. Soon, due to financial troubles, Stephen's family moves to Dublin, where
Stephen becomes infatuated with a girl named Emma Clery. They take the tram home together
after a birthday party, and Stephen writes her a love poem.
The book leaps over a few years once again; now, Stephen is a high-achieving student at
Belvedere, where he is known for his seriousness and studiousness. He has been getting into a bit
of trouble with teachers and friends for his faintly heretical essays. He quibbles with his friends
and plays the role of a pedantic teacher in a school play. Sometime later, Stephen takes a
melancholy trip to his father's hometown of Cork, during which he worries about his sexual
longings, his cold indifference to others, and the end of his innocence. At the end of the year he
is awarded a large sum of money for excellent academic performance, which brings him brief
contentment. After he spends the money on friends and family, he becomes restless and unhappy
once again. He becomes more and more sexually frustrated; despite great fear and shame, he
begins to have sex with prostitutes.
Stephen’s class participates in a three-day religious retreat, composed mainly of fire-and-
brimstone lectures about sin, hell, and suffering. The vivid lectures render Stephen’s guilt
unbearable, and he decides to confess his sins and live purely and piously from now on. Soon,
though, Stephen’s resolve begins to weaken, and he is beset by doubts. Just then, the director of
Belvedere tells Stephen in a private meeting that he might be well-suited for the priesthood. The
director’s flattering suggestion forces Stephen to make a decision: Stephen realizes suddenly that
he finds a priest’s life repulsive and boring, and turns joyfully away from the religious life.
Instead, he applies for admission to the University of Dublin. One day, as he walks on the shore,
he realizes that his true calling is that of a writer; he looks at a lovely girl standing in the water
and feels overcome with joy.
In the next scene, Stephen is a confident, well-respected student at the university. He skips many
of his classes and spends most of his time walking around with his friends and holding forth
about aesthetics. Only his friend Cranly can out-talk him, and only Cranly seems immune to the
musty charm of Stephen’s strident theories. Stephen writes another poem for Emma, who still
consumes his thoughts. In the book’s final pages, which take the form of diary entries, Stephen
writes joyfully about leaving Ireland to find his destiny as a writer

ANALYSIS:
CHAPTER I:
When the novel opens, we are in the mind of a child. Joyce takes us inside the mind of a child to
show us how a child sees and records the world around him. The child is only three years old and
he uses simple words and phrases. His name is Stephen. As a young child Stephen begins to
identify himself with the physical world and with his family. He remembers his father’s hairy
face, his mother’s sweet smell and uncomfortable experience of wetting the bed. It was a good
time, he says because he feels safe and secure from harm.
His next memory is about his days at Clongowes Wood College. It starts about three years later.
Stephen is small and weak and suffers from poor vision. He misses his family and his home very
much. He has miserable days there. He feels himself lonely. Stephen is a sensitive young boy at
that time. His first crisis starts when Wells pushes him into the square ditch. Wells is Stephen’s
bullying classmate. Because of him they take Stephen to the school infirmary (=a small hospital)
to recover from a fever. There Stephen meets Athy. This boy tells Stephen that he too has an
unusual name.
Stephen feels depressed because of his illness. He comforts himself by imagining his own burial
ceremony and Well’s feeling sorry for him. Then he falls into sleep. He remembers Brother
Michael’s words about the death of Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell is an Irish hero. One day
Stephen returns home to celebrate Christmas. On that day his parents, his old nurse and his
father’s friend Casey start talking about Parnell. They are at the Christmas dinner at that time.
Stephen gets very excited because for the first time he is sitting at the table with the adults.
But then they start arguing. They argue about the Catholic Church’s role in politics and its
attitude toward Parnell’s followers. Casey is Parnell’s loyal supporter. He defends Parnell. He
believes that the Church was the reason of Parnell’s death. The next scene opens Stephen’s back
at Clongowes. He is at Father Anell’s Latin lesson. Father Dolan, the prefect of studies notices
that Fleming and Stephen are not doing their lessons. He comes near to Stephen. Stephen
explains his condition. He cannot do his lessons because broke his glasses.
But Dolan does not want to believe him. He thinks that Stephen broke his glasses on purpose.
Sadistic Dolan punishes Stephen. After that Stephen feels humiliated. He gets angry because of
Dolan’s unjust cruelty. His classmates are angry, too. They believe that Stephen should tell about
Dolan’s injustice to the rector. The rector, Father Conmee is a kind man. He believes Stephen’s
words. The rector promises Stephen that he will resolve the situation. Stephen feels like a hero
and a leader. His classmates get happy and lift him. Stephen is happy too because he feels free of
fear.

CHAPTER II:
The second chapter opens with Stephen at home. He is spending the summer with his family.
Stephen enjoys being with his father and his Uncle Charles. They go for walks in the mornings
together. They talk about their family and country. At the end of the summer Stephen cannot
return his school because his family has financial problems. After some time they move to
Dublin. Stephen wants to escape his unhappiness. He deeply starts thinking about love and
romance. He writes a short poem about his beloved. After some time Stephen starts attending
Belvedere College. It is also a Jesuit school.
The next scene opens about two and half years later. Stephen is probably fourteen years old. He
he developed his writing and acting skills. Now he is a confident young man. He is still at
Belvedere College. He is preparing to go onstage in the school play. Suddenly he starts
remembering his first terrible year at Belvedere. He felt insecure in those days. One day his
English teacher discussed one of Stephen’s essays and said that it contained heresy. His some
classmates were jealous of him and some even beat him. He remembers his days half-blinded by
tears.
Stephen does not forget those days but he is not angry with his classmates and teachers. Now he
is in love with a young girl. She is his adolescent love. The girl came to see him in the play. She
admires Stephen. We next see Stephen travelling with his father on a train. They are going to
Cork. There his father Simon plans to sell the rest of his property. Simon tells him about old
times and lost friends. Stephen gets bored and starts observing his father.
Simon does not about his son’s sorrow. He continues talking about his old friends. He tells
Stephen to always behave like a gentleman. Stephen feels isolated and angry because his father
does not really know how to be a father. In the next scene Stephen gets the prize money for his
winning essay. He gets excited and spends his money for dinners, gifts and some redecoration of
his home. But soon he starts feeling scared. He keeps himself separate from his family each
evening. Now he is walking alone in the dark street. He feels very lonely. There Stephen meets a
young Dublin girl. She is a prostitute. She invites Stephen to her room. There he experiences his
first sexual relationship.

CHAPTER III:
After his first sexual experience he starts feeling ashamed. Joyce refers to it as “Stephen’s first
violent sin”. Sometimes he feels unable to pray. He knows that he is in danger of “eternal
damnation but he does not regret and pray. The next scene is in the chapel. Father Arnall begins
his sermon on the “death, judgement, hell and heaven”. Stephen gets scared after listening to
Father Arnall’s sermon. He feels like Arnall is speaking personally to him.
Stephen feels terrible when he hears the descriptions of Hell. They are extremely painful for
Stephen. He imagines the darkness of Hell. Stephen gets frustrated by retreat master’s words. He
also feels guilty and ashamed. After some time Stephen’s legs shaking. Feeling guilty and
horrified he leaves the chapel. He knows that he must make confession immediately. Stephen
believes that his shame is great. That is why he asks God to forgive his not wanting to confess in
the college chapel.
He returns him room soon. Then he starts calculating his sins. Stephen imagines Hell and cruel
creatures in it. After that he goes to a chapel on Church Street and talks with an old cleric. The
cleric tells Stephen to ask Blessed Virgin for help. The next morning he takes Holy Communion
during Mass. There he vows to begin a new life of purity. Stephen becomes a religious person
after that. But it does not last for a long time.

CHAPTER IV:
The chapter opens with Stephen’s dedicating his life to his religion. Every day he attends an
early Mass. Now he has a new harsh discipline for his new life. Soon the director of the school
invites him to his office. The director wants him to be a priest. Stephen shakes the director’s
hand. He thinks carefully about the lifestyle of a priest. He wants God to forgive him for his sins
but he realizes that he cannot be a priest because he has his own weaknesses and trouble. Also he
does not want to live a life of a priest.
He goes home and there learns that they are moving again. The young children start singing and
Stephen joins them. At that moment he realizes that he strongly wants be free of his religion and
his family’s poverty. Now he is optimistic about his life. He is sure that he can have a better life.
He wants to attend the university. But he is still worried for his future because he has no
direction for his life. He starts thinking about his freedom.
He goes to the beach. While walking on the beach he sees a girl there. The young girl is
watching the sea. When Stephen sees the girl’s face he is struck by her beauty. He cries out
“Heavenly God!” Stephen realizes the importance of beauty. Now he does not feel shame
because of his desire for her. The chapter finishes as Stephen pauses to rest for a while. He is on
the beach. He falls asleep and gets up much later. It is dark everywhere now.

CHAPTER V:
This is the final and longest chapter of the novel. Stephen’s mother is afraid of university
education. It is because she thinks that it will change Stephen. His father curses him for his
laziness. Then she warns Stephen about the time. He has to go to the university. He says goodbye
to them and goes to the university. In the next scene we see that Stephen is not a model scholar.
He gets bored in the lessons easily. But in this chapter he interacts with his friends and university
teachers. When we compare him with other characters, we can see how he is intelligent and
talented. There is another boy. His name is Davin. Stephen and Davin become friends. Stephen is
fond of him. He values Davin’s passion. Here we can see a contrast between Stephen’s thoughts
and Davins’.
As Stephen goes toward the lecture hall, he meets the Dean of Studies. They talk for a while. The
Dean’s understanding of Stephen is limited. For that reason Stephen starts thinking that the Dean
has a job but he has does not have knowledge about his job. After that Stephen takes part in a
spirited discussion. It is among a group of his fellow students. Later he meets Cranly and
Temple. Soon, Lynch and Davin join them. Stephen explains his aesthetic theory to Lynch there.
Then rain begins to fall. Stephen and Lynch return to the library. Lynch continues talking but
Stephen is not listening to his friend. He is watching Emma Clery. Stephen is attracted to her for
a long time. H’s mind is full of questions: “How does Emma spend her days? What is she
thinking? Next morning, Stephen awakens refreshed because of his dream about Emma. She
inspires him very much. He writes a villanelle (pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with
only two rhymes throughout and some lines repeated) in her honor. In the next scene, Stephen is
again on the library steps. He is watching birds flying overhead. He counts the birds. He hears
their cries. Cranly, Dixon, Temple and other’s voices interrupt his thoughts. Temple and Cranly
have a battle of insult. They dislike each other because of their jealousy over Stephen’s attention.
Suddenly, Emma passes by. Stephen is in love with her. Emma seems to invite Stephen to leave
his life at the university. Then Stephen wants to talk with Cranly in private. He asks for some
advice from Cranly about his “Easter duty”(Confession and communion). Cranly advices
Stephen to do his Easter duty and please his mother. He says that Stephen does not need to
believe in the sacredness of the Church rituals. Stephen confesses that he prefers to leave his
family, religion and country behind.
He feels a deep need to declare his artistic, spiritual and national independence. But he is sad
because he and Cranly have no longer the same opinions about this topic. Stephen says that he
will not serve something in which he no longer believes. In the end Stephen prepares to leave
Ireland. He wants to live his life free of any kind of limitations. In his diary he asks his mythical
name sick, Daedalus to help him in his new life. He leaves Ireland for a new life of an artist.

CHARACTERS:
 SIMON DEDALUS:
Simon Dedalus spends a great deal of his time reliving past experiences, lost in his own
sentimental nostalgia. Joyce often uses Simon to symbolize the bonds and burdens that Stephen's
family and nationality place upon him as he grows up. Simon is a nostalgic, tragic figure: he has
a deep pride in tradition, but he is unable to keep his own affairs in order. To Stephen, his father
Simon represents the parts of family, nation, and tradition that hold him back, and against which
he feels he must rebel. The closest look we get at Simon is on the visit to Cork with Stephen,
during which Simon gets drunk and sentimentalizes about his past. Joyce paints a picture of a
man who has ruined himself and, instead of facing his problems, drowns them in alcohol and
nostalgia

 STEPHEN DEDALUS:
An intelligent, sensitive, anxious, and ill-tempered boy growing up in an increasingly
impoverished Catholic household in Dublin. In his long student years, Stephen passes through
many discrete stages. He matures from a shy, frail child with a magically keen eye (and ear and
nose) for sensory detail to a studious, moody teenager filled with vague longing for love, fame,
and worldly beauty. When he comes physically of age, he is anguished to discover that he cannot
reconcile his austere Catholic upbringing with his intense erotic desire. His shame becomes so
great that he turns wholeheartedly to religion in search of spiritual peace. But despite his many
years of religious observance, he comes to find the religious life and worldview profoundly
unsatisfying: shallow, illogical, and boring. Stephen seems to find peace, or something like it,
only when he discovers his vocation and ambition as a writer.

 EMMA:
Emma is Stephen's "beloved," the young girl to whom he is intensely attracted over the course of
many years. Stephen does not know Emma particularly well, and is generally too embarrassed or
afraid to talk to her, but feels a powerful response stirring within him whenever he sees her.
Stephen's first poem, "To E— C—," is written to Emma. She is a shadowy figure throughout the
novel, and we know almost nothing about her even at the novel's end. For Stephen, Emma
symbolizes one end of a spectrum of femininity. Stephen seems able to perceive only the
extremes of this spectrum: for him, women are either pure, distant, and unapproachable, like
Emma, or impure, sexual, and common, like the prostitutes he visits during his time at
Belvedere.

MINOR CHARACTERS:
 MARY DEDALUS:
Stephen’s mother, a modest and retiring woman who struggles to keep the family afloat when
they begin to struggle financially. She is a devout Catholic. She disapproves of Stephen’s studies
at the university, and does her best to convince Stephen to be a good Catholic despite his artistic
ambitions.

 THE DEDALUS CHILDREN:

Stephen’s nine younger siblings, who appear most often sitting around the kitchen table chatting
and drinking tea. It is implied that most of them do not receive the same advantages as Stephen.

 DANTE (MRS. RIORDAN):

Stephen’s governess, and a friend of the family. Dante is a devout Catholic who fights bitterly
with Simon and Mr. Casey about Parnell and the role of the Catholic Church, favoring the
Church.

 MR. JOHN CASEY:

A friend of Simon’s who shares Simon’s pro-Parnell nationalist politics.

 UNCLE CHARLES:
Stephen’s great uncle. Stephen spends a large part of his summer at Blackrock listening to Uncle
Charles’ stories.

 WELLS:
A boy at Clongowes who pushes Stephen into a ditch.

 SIMON MOONAN AND TUSKER BOYLE:

Two boys in Stephen’s year at Clongowes who get caught engaging in some sexual activity with
two older boys.

 ATHY:
A boy at Clongowes who asks Stephen riddles in the infirmary.

 BROTHER MICHAEL:
A kind and gentle priest who tends to Stephen in the infirmary.

 FATHER ARNALL:
An ill-tempered Latin teacher at Clongowes. He gives guest lectures at Belvedere during the
religious retreat, which inspire in Stephen terrible guilt and fear.

 FATHER DOLAN:
A head teacher at Clongowes who gives Stephen an unjust beating for laziness.

 FATHER CONMEE:
The kindly rector of Clongowes who takes Stephen’s side in his dispute with Father Dolan.

 MIKE FLYNN:
A retired athletic trainer and a friend of Simon’s, who coaches Stephen in running during his
summer in Blackrock.

 AUBREY MILLS:
Stephen’s friend during his summer in Blackrock.

 VINCENT HERON:
Stephen’s closest friend at Belvedere, a rowdy, clever bully.

 CRANLY:
Stephen’s closest friend at university, an intelligent medical student who is in equal part sincere
and scornful. Stephen thinks of Cranly as a sort of secular confessor.

 DAVIN:
One of Stephen’s close friends at university. Davin comes from the Irish countryside; he is
single-mindedly devoted to his country. In Stephen’s life, he is the voice of Irish patriotism.

 TEMPLE:
An intellectually ambitious but awkward student at the university. Other students constantly
mock him for his half-baked ideas.

 MCCANN:
A politically engaged student who tries to convince Stephen to sign a petition for world peace.

 LYNCH:
A philandering friend of Stephen’s with a particularly crude sense of humor. Stephen lectures
him on aesthetic philosophy.

THEMES:
THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
Perhaps the novel “A portrait of an artist as a young man” is mostly famous for its stream of
consciousness style. This style makes the novel a story of the development of Stephen’s mind. It
means that the author directly writes the thoughts and sensations that go through a character’s
mind. In the first chapter the young Stephen can describe his world only with simple words.
Later, when he becomes a teenager, he is able to think in more adult manner. In the novel the
thoughts progress logically. Stephen is more mature now and is aware of his surroundings. But
he still trusts the church. Stephen feels ashamed and guilty for his sins. He seems truly rational
only when he is in the university. That happens in the final chapter. By the end of the novel we
can see that Stephen achieves emotional, intellectual and artistic adulthood. The development of
Stephen’s consciousness in the novel is really interesting because Stephen is a portrait of James
Joyce himself.

ROLE OF THE ARTIST:

The novel explores what it means to become an artist. It is not easy to become an artist. Stephen
decides to leave his family, friends and country to become an artist. It happens at the end of the
novel. Here we can see that Joyce suggests the artist be isolated figure. Stephen turns his back on
his community, religion, family and family. It is because he does not want any limitations and
strongly wishes to become an artist. He leaves his community for his goal.  But his goal is to
give a voice to the very community. Soon Stephen realizes that his community will be always a
part of him. It is because his community created and shaped his identity.

BEAUTY, SENSITIVITY, AND IMAGINATION:

Stephen greatly values beauty and art. He has a desire for beauty and art. Even as a child, young
Stephen is so imaginative and sensitive. These feelings grow with him. He thinks about beauty
and power of art carefully. Then he decides to leave the country. It is because he realizes that he
cannot live without art. He decides to pursue the life as an artist

SPIRITUALHOMELESSNESS:
Having or lacking a home is an important theme throughout the novel. Home means several
things to Stephen. In the literal sense his family has no steady home. Because of Simon's
financial irresponsibility, the family must continually pack up and move from place to place.
Similarly, Stephen must change schools and academic situations. In a broader, more symbolic
sense, Stephen is without a path, so he cannot feel at home in the world. A path—the priesthood
—has offered itself to him, but Stephen does not feel entirely comfortable following it, so he
chooses instead to leave it, as a first step toward his own exile. He wanders literally through the
back alleys of Dublin and spiritually through the twists and turns of his own intentions. The
novel's ending can be seen as his acceptance of exile, as a sort of homecoming, then, regardless
of whatever insecurity an artist's life might offer. Because Stephen feels confident in his
decision, he is more completely at rest.

INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE:

Ideas of innocence and experience, of change and maturation, are central to
every Künstlerroman (a novel that narrates an artist’s growth and development), of
which Portrait is one. In Joyce’s novel, the theme of innocence and experience structures the
remaining four themes, because in each case the novel traces the child-to-adult arc of Stephen’s
shifting perspective. That is to say, when we talk about Portrait we are always talking about the
evolution from innocence to experience.
Stephen’s own idea of innocence is deeply influenced by Christian notions of purity and sin.
Throughout the book, he identifies innocence as a sexless, lust less existence – the life of a child
or a celibate; experience, on the other hand, is a fallen condition, filled with doubt and shame.
For example, he imagines that Emma was innocent as a young girl, but after her sexual
awakening she is “humbled and saddened by the dark shame of womanhood.” Innocence, for
Stephen, also denotes a kind of simple, hearty, direct relationship to the surrounding world.
Stephen’s adolescence is marked by growing isolation, a spiritual alienation from friends and
family. When he recalls the sensory vividness and immediacy of his childhood, and when he
listens to stories of easy companionship from his father’s youth, he feels that his innocence has
disappeared – that the child Stephen has died.
The two notions of innocence are closely connected, because to a large extent it is Stephen’s
sexual shame that drives him away from others: to hide his shame, he retreats into a secretive
inner world. Shame of the body also complicates and disturbs Stephen’s relationship to sensory
experience. By the end of the novel, though, Stephen’s religious anxieties start to diminish, and
his sensory life seems to grow brighter once again. Innocence usually gives way to experience; in
Stephen’s case, experience also gives way to innocence: “his soul had arisen from the grave of
boyhood.”

SOUL AND BODY:

The gap between soul and body means a great deal to Stephen during childhood and adolescence.
As a child, Stephen notes countless particular sights, sounds, and smells, and interprets them
with great tenderness and seriousness: they seem to lead him deep into his memories and his
understanding of the world. In this way, body and soul are naturally connected for Stephen as a
child. But Stephen also shies away from many social activities, preferring to keep to himself and
attend to his thoughts and daydreams: he distinguishes between extroverted activity, in which his
body interacts with others, and introverted activity, in which his soul communes with itself.
Stephen’s religious education reinforces the soul-body split. He has been taught since early
childhood that premarital sex is a grave and shameful sin, so he perceives his adolescent sexual
longing as a sort of insubordination of body against soul – an appalling perversion he must keep
hidden at any cost. His secret lust, vague ambition, and keen poetic vision create a strange and
weighty inner world that does not often correspond to the shrill, dirty, practical world of city,
school, and family. Though he often feels burdened by this ghostly inner life, he seeks to protect
it from dogmatic external influences: when he tries to control his body and elevate his soul
through meticulous religious practice, the formulaic religious teaching ultimately fails to leave
any permanent mark on his inner life.
The culmination of his religious crisis seems to mark the reunion of soul and body: the senses,
“the call of life to his soul,” turn Stephen away from the priesthood, fuel his artistic ambitions,
and restore his inner world – the senses of the body, the same senses that fuel his lust. But when
Stephen arrives to university, he carries the split into his rather antiquated aesthetic theories. He
brags that he will “try to fly by [the] nets” of nationality, language, religion; but before he can
become truly free, before he can repair the antagonism between soul and body, Stephen must
create an aesthetics of his own. This new aesthetics, embodied by Portrait itself, will be one that
does not privilege unity over dispersion, thought over feeling, or purity over reality.

LITERATURE AND LIFE:

Since earliest childhood, novels and poems help Stephen make sense of the world around him.
From the very first scene of the novel, in which infant Stephen creates a little rhyme from
Dante’s threat that “eagles will come and pull out his eyes,” words shape and brighten Stephen’s
experience. The sounds of words puzzle and enlighten him, and novels like The Count of Monte
Christo help him shape his adolescent identity. At times, beautiful phrases from poems thrill him
as much as real romantic experiences.
Yet, though Stephen’s inner experience melds art and life, Stephen the young poet and aesthete
believes there must exist a great distance between them: he imagines art as the vapory spirit
soaring high over the city of the real. Drawing on the philosophy of Aristotle and Saint Thomas
Aquinas, Stephen decides that art must inspire only philosophical abstractions about emotions,
“ideal pity or terror,” but not real emotions themselves – he thinks passions like love and anger
are too lowly for art. In his own poetry, he omits random or unsavory detail in favor of high
romantic abstraction. “Excrement or a child or a louse” finds no place in his art. Joyce’s novel
itself, of course, includes everything Stephen omits: passion, crudeness, dirt, randomness,
contradiction. The novel itself gently mocks and refutes Stephen’s youthful theories – theories
that once belonged, perhaps, to the young Joyce himself.

ORDER AND SENSES:

During his childhood, Stephen lives by his senses: he understands the people and things around
him only by the way they look, sound, smell, or feel. The novel suggests that to child Stephen,
his mother is her good smell, and nighttime is the chill of the sheets. His attention always veers
toward detail: when he learns that Simon Moonan did something forbidden and homosexual with
some other boys, he can only understand the news by thinking of Simon’s nice clothes and fancy
candy. He has trouble with abstractions and categories; he does not clearly understand the
meaning of the York-Lancaster competition in his math class, but he thinks intently of the colors
of the handkerchiefs and award cards. When he tries to think of the idea of god or the
organization of the planet during study hall, “it made him feel tired,” and he focuses instead on
the colors of the map.
In his adolescence, Stephen remains preoccupied with sensory detail, but his relationship to it
becomes much more troubled. As he develops abstract thinking, he begins to ask himself large
questions like: Are priests always good? What is sin? What is greatness? What is Ireland? The
questions force him to try to order and interpret his experience, which reveals puzzling
contradiction and unintelligible variety. At this point in his maturation, his talent for observation
surpasses his interpretative abilities. In other words, he sees and hears and smells a great deal but
he can’t quite make sense of it. For relief, he first turns to old novels and poetry, which present a
somewhat simplified and romantic picture of love and honor; then he turns to religion, with its
rigid and reliable rules; and finally to academia and aesthetics, which also provide frameworks
for understanding. None of these is quite faithful to Stephen’s actual experience, which always
exceeds the frameworks with intense, mysterious sensory and emotional detail. By the end of the
novel, Stephen is ready to leave behind the mistakes of his adolescence and to create a new
framework, “to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience.

RELIGION, NATIONALITY ANDFREEDOM:

Stephen grows up in an atmosphere of political and religious controversy. The late 19th century
was a turbulent time in Ireland. The beloved separatist leader Parnell, exposed as an adulterer
and condemned by the Catholic Church in 1891, divided the nation just as he divided the
Dedalus Christmas dinner in the novel. Throughout his childhood and adolescence Stephen feels
the pull of worldly causes, hears a chorus of voices instructing him to join this group or that. But
as he becomes more and more absorbed into his elaborate inner life, he determines to ignore the
voices and pursue his own thoughts. Though religious piety briefly gives him respite from shame
and confusion, he finds it impossible to confine himself to the narrow religious perspective.
When he turns away from religion, he feels a soaring sense of freedom. Similarly, he turns away
from conventional Irish nationalism and other popular political causes, intuiting that they will
constrict his intellectual and emotional life. Yet, though the ‘feminism’ of his compatriots does
not appeal to him, he aspires to express with his writing another, subtler sort of Irishness, “to
forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”

SYMBOLS:
 MUSIC:
Stephen often evokes music to describe the intuitive, mysterious loveliness of certain
experiences: the sound of the gas pipes at Clongowes is a song, the wheels of the train to Cork
beat out a rhythmic music, the words in poems sound out melodies, and memory itself is like
music. Music also signals moments of transition and discovery; a simple melody turns Stephen
away from the priesthood and reminds him of his artistic ambitions. More generally, music
represents a loosening of boundaries: “the music passed in an instant, as the first bars of sudden
music always did, over the fantastic fabrics of his mind, dissolving them painlessly and
noiselessly as a sudden wave dissolves the sandbuilt turrets of children.” Stephen responds
strongly and intuitively to music, and it helps restore his childlike, artistic connection to the
world around him.

 BATS:
Bats seem, to Stephen, to represent something essential about the conflicted, dark, mysterious
Ireland of his childhood. He does not make the comparison entirely clear, yet he refers to it
several times, with strong feeling: “he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he
belonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes,” he writes in one place; and “she was a
figure of the womanhood of her country, a bat-like soul waking to the consciousness of itself in
darkness and secrecy and loneliness.” At the turn of nineteenth century, Ireland was emerging
from many centuries of British domination to a strong sense of national pride and dreams of
independence. Stephen feels that Irish identity and self-awareness is still very young and
uncertain, like a blind bat flying in the dark; it is also secretive and elusive, unlike the raucous
Fenian celebrations in the streets. It is his artistic ambition to capture this identity and bring it to
light.

 EMMA:
Emma appears only in glimpses throughout most of Stephen's young life, and he never gets to
know her as a person. Instead, she becomes a symbol of pure love, untainted by sexuality or
reality. Stephen worships Emma as the ideal of feminine purity. When he goes through his
devoutly religious phase, he imagines his reward for his piety as a union with Emma in heaven.
It is only later, when he is at the university, that we finally see a real conversation between
Stephen and Emma. Stephen's diary entry regarding this conversation portrays Emma as a real,
friendly, and somewhat ordinary girl, but certainly not the goddess Stephen earlier makes her out
to be. This more balanced view of Emma mirrors Stephen's abandonment of the extremes of
complete sin and complete devotion in favor of a middle path, the devotion to the appreciation of
beauty

 WATER:
Joyce presents water in both a positive and negative light. The initial image is that of bedwetting.
The image becomes more degraded with the imagery of ditchwater (actually, cesspool water)
into which the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is pushed while a student at Clongowes. (Also
emphasized is the dampness and dankness of the school itself.) However, we must look beyond
the repugnant representations to realize that despite these intended negative connotations, water
in literature is usually representative of birth or rebirth: the fluid environment that is the home of
the fetus in the womb. The water images, while numerous, are best represented by the occasion
of Stephen's encountering the girl sea-bathing: it is the beginning of his realization of his destiny
in life. As such, the experience is an awakening and a birth. One might even liken it to the early
Christians' rite of baptism by immersion--the burying of the "old man" (sin and self) in a watery
grave and the resurrection of the new man to new life.

 BRIDGES:
Bridges are as important to Joyce as the water they cover. In literature, they are often symbolic
of a new beginning, a venture dared. In this way, bridges can represent the idea of birth as much
as water does. Stephen is often seen crossing a bridge when a new insight comes to him. One
such instance is just before he happens on the bird-girl.
  BIRDS:
Birds are often used in literature to symbolize everything from flight/escape, to soaring passion,
to spirituality. Clearly, Joyce intended all three meanings at the various stages through which
Stephen progresses. Characters in the book are often identified in terms of birds--Vincent Heron,
for example, and the girl wading in the sea. (An example, Stephen might say, of the dramatic
form, since the image is identified solely in relation to another.) Literal birds appear in the novel
at least once; for example, when Stephen watches birds wheeling and circling. He decides it is to
fly away from Ireland--something he himself will do at the book's close. By this we see that the
"escape" image carries through as much as the spiritual experience with the bird-girl.

 STARS:
Stars (collectively) are representative of spiritual aspirations, reaching toward the light (Truth),
striving for goals. Stephen Dedalus, with his artist's mind, is entranced by the line by poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley referring to (falling) bright starlight. (Shelley writes much of starlight--a topic for
another time.) However, Stephen imagines lice like bright things (i.e., "stars") falling to the earth
from heaven. His artist's mind analogously creates figures of light and heavenliness even from
lice; they may said to be stars, heavenly objects, symbols of his aspiration and the pursuit of
Light and Truth to which artists devote themselves. In another key scene, Stephen stands and
watches the stars come out after the wading girl's departure. This moment is the crossroads of his
artistic existence. It is no coincidence that nearly every important image previously discussed
appears in this scene as well

 SKULLS AND MASKS:

The image of the skull is very present in Stephen’s interactions with his Jesuit teachers,
emphasizing the deathly and passionless character he eventually comes to recognize as a sign of
the priesthood. The skull is a commonly used Christian symbol; it represents Golgotha, the
supposed location of Christ’s death. A skull also pops up in the graveyard scene from
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a play whose title character greatly resembles Stephen (they both
think way too much about things). As early as Chapter One, Stephen notes a skull present in the
Rector’s office at Clongowes. Later, he emphasizes the prominent curves of the skull of the
Director of Belvedere. After his falling out with Cranly at the end of the novel, he comments on
the "death mask"-like quality of his friend’s face, which reminds him of the severed head of St.
John the Baptist (in his first description of Cranly much earlier, he also calls it a "priest like
face"). Finally, Lynch is also described in terms of a mask; however, his face is a "devil’s mask."

 COLOR:
Color plays a substantial role in Chapter One – the colors green and maroon are associated with
Parnell and Michael Davitt, two leaders of the Irish nationalist movement. Though the two colors
seem to be in harmony at first, Stephen remembers Aunt Dante cutting the green velvet off and
telling him that Parnell is a bad man. This confusing episode, and the arguments between Dante
and Stephen’s father that follow, represent "politics" to him at this stage of childhood. To
Stephen, the two colors represent conflict and, when Fleming colors a world map with green and
maroon (a coincidence), Stephen wonders "which was right, to be for the green or for the
maroon." We also see the red and white teams in the Wars of the Roses-themed math
competition. Again, color represents conflict and opposition. Though it’s a symbol that doesn’t
come up as obviously in the rest of the text, it highlights the idea of visually representing an
ideological conflict, which is very important to Stephen as a child because of his limited
understanding of those abstract differences

IMPORTANT QUOTES:
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road
and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby
tuckoo. . . . His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy
face. He was a baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold
lemon Platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms on the little green place.

He sang that song. That was his song.

O, the green wothe botheth.

When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oil sheet. That had
the queer smell.

These first lines of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man represent Joyce's attempt to capture
the perceptions of a very young boy. The language is childish: "moocow," "tuckoo," and
"nicens" are words a child might say, or words that an adult might say to a child. In addition to
using childlike speech, Joyce tries to emulate a child's thought processes through the syntax of
his sentences and paragraphs. He jumps from thought to thought with no apparent motivation or
sense of time. We have no idea how much time goes by between Stephen's father telling him the
story and Stephen wetting the bed. Moreover, the way Stephen's thoughts turn inward reflects the
way children see themselves as the center of the universe. Stephen is the same Baby Tuckoo as
the one in the story his father tells, and the song Stephen hears is "his song." As Stephen ages,
Joyce's style becomes less childish, tracking and emulating the thoughts and feelings of the
maturing Stephen as closely as possible.

—Corpus Domini nostri. Could it be? He knelt there sinless and timid: and he would hold upon
his tongue the host and God would enter his purified body.—in vitam eternam. Amen. Another
life! A life of grace and virtue and happiness! It was true. It was not a dream from which he
would wake. The past was past.—Corpus Domini nostri. The ciborium had come to him.
One technique Joyce uses to indicate the development of Stephen's consciousness is to end each
of the five chapters with a moment of epiphany in which Stephen recognizes the fallacy of one
way of life and the truth of another. This passage is the epiphany that ends Chapter 3, the
moment in which Stephen understands that he must turn to a religious life. The passage
demonstrates one of the most revolutionary aspects of Joyce's narrative style: whereas other
confessional novels usually involve narrators looking back at the events of their youth with an
adult perspective, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is not mediated by such a detached
voice. When Stephen declares, "Another life!" and "The past was past," we are given no
indication that Stephen's religious life is eventually replaced by a calling to an artistic life.
Rather, just like Stephen, we are led to believe that he will remain religious for the rest of his life
and that the arrival of the ciborium symbolizes the arrival of his true calling. In this sense, we
experience the successive epiphanies in Stephen's life just as he experiences them, knowing that
a change is being made to life as he has lived it up to this point, but not knowing where this
change will take him in the future.

His throat ached with a desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly
of his deliverance to the winds. This was the call of life to his soul not the dull gross voice of the
world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of the
altar. An instant of wild flight had delivered him and the cry of triumph which his lips withheld
cleft his brain.

This passage, from Chapter 4, demonstrates Joyce's contention that becoming a true artist
involves a calling, not a conscious decision the artist can make himself. These thoughts fly
through Stephen's mind just before he sees a young girl wading at a beach. The sight of her
image leads to one of the most important epiphanies in the novel. Stephen sees her not long after
he has refused the priesthood, a time when he is unsure of what to do now that he has
relinquished his religious devotion. At this moment, Stephen finally feels a strong calling, and
determines to celebrate life, humanity, and freedom, ignoring all temptations to turn away from
such a celebration. He has already succumbed to temptation twice: first, a "dull gross voice"
causes him to sin deeply when he succumbs to the squalor of Dublin; second, an "inhuman
voice" invites him into the cold, dull, unfeeling world of the priesthood. Both of these
temptations, as well as the calling to become an artist, are forces through which the outside world
acts upon Stephen. In this context, the passage suggests that it is as much fate as Stephen's own
free will that leads him to become an artist.

—The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the
words home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words
without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an
acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul
frets in the shadow of his language.
This quotation, from Chapter 5, indicates the linguistic and historical context of A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man. Stephen makes this comment during his conversation with the dean of
studies. The dean, who is English, does not know what "tundish" means, and assumes it is an
Irish word. In a moment of patriotism, Stephen sympathizes with the Irish people, whose very
language is borrowed from their English conquerors. The words Stephen chooses as examples in
this passage are significant. "Ale" and "home" show how a borrowed language can suddenly
make even the most familiar things feel foreign. "Christ" alludes to the fact that even the Irish
religion has been altered by English occupation. Finally, "master" refers to the subordination of
the Irish to the English. Stephen's new awareness of the borrowed nature of his language has a
strong effect on him, as he knows that language is central to his artistic mission. By the end of
the novel, Stephen acknowledges that Irish English is a borrowed language, and resolves to use
that knowledge to shape English into a tool for expressing the soul of the imprisoned Irish race.
26 April: I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the
smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.
These final lines of the novel proclaim Stephen's aim to be an artist for the rest of his life. The
phrase "the smithy of my soul" indicates that he strives to be an artist whose individual
consciousness is the foundation for all of his work. The reference to "the uncreated conscience of
my race" implies that he strives to be an artist who uses his individual voice to create a voice and
conscience for the community into which he has been born. The final diary entry, with its
references to "old father" and "old artificer," reinforces Stephen's twofold mission. He invokes
his "old father"—which can be read as either Simon Dedalus or Ireland itself—to acknowledge
his debt to his past. He invokes the "old artificer"—his namesake, Daedalus, the master
craftsman from ancient mythology—to emphasize his role as an artist. It is through his art that
Stephen will use his individuality to create a conscience for his community.