A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is about a young boy, Stephen Dedalus, growing up in Ireland in the early 20th century. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, he is constantly pressured by the rules of society. Attending a Jesuit school, Stephen is brought up under strict Catholic rules. As a teenager, Stephen finds it difficult to fit in because he is different from most of the other people he knows. In addition to struggling with religion and his own identity, Stephen, a poet and a writer, strives to find the definition of art. This largely autobiographical coming-of-age story depicts not only an artist, but also an adolescent seeking his identity and the true meaning of religion.
Since he starts school as a young boy, Stephen is ridiculed for various personal traits. One of the young boys, Nasty Roche, upon hearing Stephen’s name asks, “What kind of a name is that?” (6) because it does not sound Irish. Many of the people Stephen encounters question whether he is really Irish, truly part of their society. In many ways, Stephen tries to be different. At one point in the book, later in Stephen’s life, his friend Davin tells him to “try and be one of us”(179), telling him to be more loyal to Ireland and to be more like the Irish people. Most people think Stephen should be more Irish and obey more by the rules of their society.
Religion is one of the major themes of the novel. When he is very young, Stephen is religious like his family, but as he grows older, he begins to commit acts forbidden by the Catholic Church, sins. He does not go to confession; he sleeps with prostitutes, and nearly looses faith in God. He does eventually “confess his sins; masses missed, prayers not said, lies…sins of anger. Envy of others, gluttony, vanity, disobedience…sins of impurity”and is compelled to conform and nearly becomes a priest. However, later in his life, Stephen slips out of religion and refuses even to attend mass. The Church regards all of these sins that Stephen confesses to be morally wrong, as mistakes, as acts that can send someone to hell. Although perhaps Stephen thinks they are normal, he is forced to regard so many things he does as sins. Therefore, in the end he breaks away from the regimented codes of the Church to pursue his art.
Throughout the novel, Stephen is constantly in search of the definition of art and beauty. At first he believes beauty to be Aquinas’ definition that “the beautiful are those things that, being seen, please” (164). Therefore, as one man tells him, “the object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful” (164). When he ponders art and beauty, he uses existing theories, such as those of Aristotle and Aquinas. However, Stephen begins to question this, asking himself what is truly beautiful and what is truly pleasing to the eye. He writes an essay about esthetics in which he says that art “is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end” but that beauty doesn’t have a meaning but that it is similar to truth (184). In other words, beauty is not simply something that pleases but also something that provides truth and art is the quest for that truth. In the end, although he uses ideas from philosophers, Stephen creates his own ideas of beauty and art. It is not until he comes up with these ideas, breaking away from conventional ones, that he can truly pursue art for himself.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the protagonist, Stephen s raised in a society that is incredibly strict and established in terms of heredity, religion, and art. The novel is about Stephen trying to break away from the rules that govern traditional Irish society and develop himself as a man and as an artist.
Acknowledgments: My dad for discussing the book with me.
Works Cited:
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004.
