Book Review: James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe."
James Joyce names his protagonist after Daedalus, the master craftsman of Greek mythology. As told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Daedalus uses his cunning to escape a tower prison, fashioning wings from feathers and wax. A symbol of the triumph of art over confinement. In Joyce’s novel, Stephen Dedalus nurtures artistic aspirations to liberate himself from the oppressive forces of religion, Irish nationalism, and family.
Simply structured, the novel spans five long chapters, each chronicling a stage of Stephen’s development. The opening lines mirror Stephen’s infancy, where he begins to navigate language: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road." The childlike narrative reflects the artist’s immersion into the world of words.
In Chapter Two, Stephen defends Byron as the greatest poet, countering accusations of heresy and immorality: “’I don’t care what he was,’ cried Stephen hotly.” Defending the rebel poet is a defense of Stephen’s own artistic sensibilities. A moment that underscores Stephens’s emerging defiance and struggle to break free from Catholic orthodoxy.
Chapter Three shifts to a harrowing spiritual retreat, where Catholic boys endure vivid descriptions of hell’s torments: "All the filth of the world... shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer." The sermon culminates in grotesque imagery of millions of the damned piled so tight, "they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it." Overwhelmed by guilt, Stephen makes a heartfelt confession, temporarily recommitting to faith. Yet this renewed piety is short-lived.
By Chapter Four, Stephen rejects the priesthood. His focus shifts to his artistic aspirations, catalyzed by a powerful epiphany when he sees a girl by the sea: "She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird." This tableau vivant—the girl poised as a vision of nature’s beauty—marks a turning point, stirring Stephen into artistic mantra: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life."
By Chapter Five, Stephen’s artistic identity has crystallized, yet his path demands separation from Ireland’s stifling influences: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe... I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can." Like Daedalus, Stephen fashions wings of intellect and imagination to escape the prison of home, religion, and nationalism: "Yes! He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore."
Stephen’s departure, like Joyce’s self-exile, embraces modernist ideals, evoking T.S. Eliot’s sentiment of “shoring fragments against his ruins,” as Stephen salvages identity from the fragmented structures of his upbringing.
Like Dubliners, Joyce’s first book, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ranks high on the accessibility meter, as compared to Joyce’s later works, Ulysses or Finnegans Wake. In a letter, Joyce wrote of his Ulysses intentions: "I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality." Similarly aspirational in Portrait, Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus leaves Ireland to pursue his artistic destiny: "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." With that, Stephen Dedalus becomes the symbol of the modern artist: introspective, defiant, and visionary.
