Through the course of a man's life, he will continually change until he becomes himself or his true self, at least according to most Native American cultures. Oddly enough, in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this is the case even though the story is set in Ireland around the time before the Independence in 1922. This book, one of Joyce's masterpieces set in the sometimes hard to follow "stream of consciousness" manner of narration has been hailed as both controversial and typical of it's time and place. In both cases, Joyce was called a "ground-breaking" author and this semi-autobiographical piece is truly a hallmark in English Literature. So what makes a masterpiece? Critics say it's because it follows the Classical example of character development that tells of the coming of age of a particular individual and surely this book is no special case. Interestingly enough, through the ending of each chapter, Joyce shows the variegation of one young man, Stephen Daedalus from one form to another, yet these "pieces" contribute to the "whole" at the end of the novel.
Joyce first shows Stephen's soft memories of what it was like to be young, almost infantile in the first few sentences but by the end of the chapter he is a young, fearful servant of God, a role that beleaguers him throughout childhood. However, the end of the second chapter sees a completely different Stephen. He first throws himself at the mercy of the Fathers that teach him while trying to get himself friends in the schoolyard at the same time and this proves to be quite a task. Eventually, from a friend, he gets the courage to stand up to his unjust whipping and humi...
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... one of the martyrs, stoned to death as a test of faith to his loving God. Daedalus was a man more notably the father of the famous Icarus, who flew too close to the sun, yadda yadda. Daedalus himself was the architect of the Labyrinth of the Minotaur, and was eventually imprisoned there himself. Fortunately, he was rescued by Perseus who also slayed the Minotaur but ironically, this freedom ended in his son's death. Stephen Daedalus therefore is both the martyr and the clever (sometimes too much for his own good) artist. Stephen "flees" from the religious obsession, which nearly mentally kills him to "take flight" as an artist, only as a young man to discover himself. His eyes are now open to the rest of the world, over a vast ocean to another continent. His audience cannot help but hope that he is "ever in good stead (253).
Throughout his lifetime, Vincent Van Gogh drew many self-portraits. It’s theorized that he drew so many to test out new painting styles and because it was cheaper to draw himself instead of hiring a model. The function of this painting is commentary since it is a visual account of a person. Using shades of blue in the background and shirt makes Vincent Van Gogh pop out. The orange in his beard complements to the blue and draws the viewer’s attention to his face.
After women fought for their right to vote and Congress passed the19th Amendment of the Constitution, women believed they were capable of doing anything. Before the 1920s, women were considered lower than men, treated poorly, and didn’t have equal opportunities. Women were not given the same opportunities as men because it was believed that women could not tolerate as much work as a man. Women were not educated and therefore didn’t have jobs. They were housewives who cooked, cleaned, and took care of their children. Women also weren’t able to display their body, for example skirts were worn down to their ankles. Revolutionary fashions during the 1920s made it acceptable for women to separate themselves from unrevealing and unflattering styles. Miss America and Flappers helped the world reconsider the part that women play in society. A door of opportunity opened for women in careers, sports, and even education. As a result women were able to desert the constrained fashions and get involved in male controlled jobs and sports.
Few people, if any, in the twentieth century have inspired as much careful study and criticism as James Joyce. His work represents a great labyrinth which many have entered but none have returned from the same. Joyce himself is a paradoxical figure, ever the artist, ever the commoner. He has been called the greatest creative genius of our century and, by some, the smartest person in all of history. His most famous novel, Ulysses, is considered by many to be the greatest novel ever written. Beyond all of these superlatives lies a perfect case study in the creative mind and process.
“Women’s roles were constantly changing and have not stopped still to this day.” In the early 1900s many people expected women to be stay at home moms and let the husbands support them. But this all changes in the 1920s, women got the right to vote and began working from the result of work they have done in the war. Altogether in the 1920s women's roles have changed drastically.
Throughout Dubliners James Joyce deliberately effaces the traditional markers of the short story: causality, closure, etc. In doing so, "the novel continually offers up texts which mark their own complexity by highlighting the very thing which traditional realism seeks to conceal: the artifice and insufficiency inherent in a writer's attempt to represent reality.(Seidel 31)" By refusing to take a reductive approach towards the world(s) he presents on the page - to offer up "meaning" or "ending" - Joyce moves the reader into complex and unsettling epistemological and ontological realms. Meaning is no longer unitary and prescriptive, the author will not reveal (read impose) what the story "means" at its close and therefore we can't definitively "know" anything about it. Instead, meaning, like modernism, engenders its own multiplicity in Joyce's works, diffuses into something necessarily plural: meanings. An ontological crisis is inextricable from this crisis of meaning and representation. In Joyce's stories the reader is displaced from her/his traditionally passive role as receptor of the knowledge an author seeks to impart, and "positioned as both reader and writer of text, in some ways playing as integral a part in constructing the work as the author does.(Benstock 17)"
Stephen's childhood in the convent and with his family is shaped around conformity. Phrases such as "Pull out his eyes / Apologise / Apologise / Pull out his eyes" continually insist on the strict code of behaviour that Stephen is expected to uphold (4).
In James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus feels confined by the nagging presence and rigidity of his family, the Catholic Church, his Irish nationality and his social class. In order to free his soul and express himself as the artist he knew he was, Stephen had to break away from these social institutions. The journey Stephen takes, follows the narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey and shares similarities with the mythical character, Daedulus’s life.
Levin, Harry. "The Artist." James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Penguin, 1968. 399-415.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, the author of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, was once described by a friend, Constantine Curran, as "a man of unparalleled vituperative power, a virtuoso in speech with unique control of the vernacular." While Constantine viewed Joyce's quality of verbal abuse "powerful," and praised his "control" of the language, many viewed this expressive and unrestrained style of writing as inappropriate and offensive. A dramatic new step for modernism, Joyce used language, style, and descriptions of previously unwritten thoughts and situations which stirred the cultural norm, thus sparking controversy over what was necessary and acceptable in literature.
James Joyce's fragment of a novel, Stephen Hero, leaves the reader little room to interpret the text for themselves. The work lacks the narrative distance that Joyce achieves in his later works. Dubliners, a work Joyce was writing concurrently, seemingly employs a drastically different voice. A voice which leaves the reader room to make judgments of their own. Yet it is curious that Joyce could produce these two works at the same time, one that controls the reader so directly, telling not showing , while the other, Dubliners, seems to give the reader the power of final interpretation over the characters it portrays.
The novel starts right off with the notion of a love between a mother and son. Even at a young age Stephen is able to distinguish that his mother is a source of pure unabridged love. “His mother had a nicer smell than his father.”(1) At a very young age the artist is already beginning to form because of women, he is beginning to see beauty through the senses. “His mother put her lips on his cheek; her lips were soft and they wetted his cheek; and they made a tiny little noise: kiss.”(7) This scene occurs very early on with Stephens mother Mary Dedalus here and throughout the novel helps in teaching him right and wrong what is to be expected, but above all show him the capacity to love and understand what is to be loved unconditionally. Stephens mother is also is there in all the key moments in Stephens life; in his leaving to boarding school as a child, then in leaving to London. In these instances she shows perhaps an overprotectiveness toward him in the cleaning of his ears once already an adult, in advising him on friends and money throughout his youth while al...
As Stephen grows, he slowly but inexorably distances himself from religion. His life becomes one concerned with pleasing his friends and family. However, as he matures he begins to feel lost and hopeless, stating, "He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancor that divided him from mother and brother and sister." It is this very sense of isolation and loneliness that leads to Stephen's encounter with the prostitute, where, "He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin.
Even as a young boy, Stephen experienced rejection and isolation at school. On the playground Stephen "felt his body [too] small and weak amid the [other] players" (Joyce 8). His schoolmates even poked fun at his name. In response to his rejection by the other boys Stephen makes a conscious decision to "[keep] on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect" and the other boys. Stephen is later depicted as choosing the "warm study hall" rather than the playground with his friends outside (Joyce 10). His rejection at school leads him to isolate himself in his schoolwork, thus putting himself on a scholarly path that will give him the intellectual skills necessary for the artist within him to achieve adulthood.
Stephen's relationship with the opposite sex begins to develop early in his life. Within the first few pages of the novel lie hints of the different roles women will...
Stephen's Journey to Maturation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce