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The portrait of the artist as a young man essays
The portrait of the artist as a young man essays
The portrait of the artist as a young man essays
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Convergence in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
As far as portraits go, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is pretty dynamic. Stephen is constantly in motion, hurtling through life. He sees, smells, and touches everything around him. But I'd like to focus on one of the quieter moments - a moment of convergence. The narrative encloses Stephen in a cloud of his own past, present, and future as he stands in a Dublin courtyard:
He began to beat the frayed end of his ashplant against the base of the pillar. Had Cranly not heard him? Yet he could wait. The talk about him ceased for a moment: and a soft hiss fell again from a window above. But no other sound was in the air and the swallows whose flight had followed with idle eyes were sleeping. [1]
Stephen's impatience melts as his quiet thoughts replace whatever he was about to say to Cranly. He closes his senses off to his companions, to the roosting sounds of the birds in the courtyard and the jangle of the streets. He hears only "a soft hiss". This is the point of intersection for Stephen, and for the narrative itself. Stephen remembers a quiet moment of prayer "in a wood near Malahide" - the past. He thinks of Emma walking through the streets of Dublin leaving a trail of reverent silence. She is the now. Stephen beats an ashplant - a convenient prop for a poet - against a pillar and decides that he can wait. Darkness is falling - it's almost tomorrow, almost the future. This moment of quiet convergence for Stephen is a point of intersection for the reader: past, present, and future meet in a dusky Dublin courtyard. Joyce incorporates several layers of his own creation into the scene - draws on his own "Epiphanies" and gives Stephen a prop to carry into Ulysses.
In chapter five of the novel, Joyce sets up this meditative moment for Stephen, has him remember a quiet moment of prayer from his past:
. . . he had dismounted from a borrowed creaking bicycle to pray to God in a wood near Malahide. He had lifted up his arms and spoken in ecstasy to the sombre nave of the trees, knowing that he stood on holy ground and in a holy hour.
The timeline carries on chronologically, the intense imagery exaggerated to allow the poem to mimic childlike mannerisms. This, subjectively, lets the reader experience the adventure through the young speaker’s eyes. The personification of “sunset”, (5) “shutters”, (8) “shadows”, (19) and “lamplights” (10) makes the world appear alive and allows nothing to be a passing detail, very akin to a child’s imagination. The sunset, alive as it may seem, ordinarily depicts a euphemism for death, similar to the image of the “shutters closing like the eyelids”
Yet the Reverend also uses the word 'beautiful' and appreciates the wonders of the natural world. Certainly, a sense of something beyond the pragmatic permeates Maclean?s story. This ?something? is incarnated in Paul, who obviously does not conform to a narrowly-defined description of a ?good Christian.? He is a rabblerouser adrift in the world, a sophisticated ladies? man and gambler who squanders what is seemingly ample journalistic talent. Paul, however, is also effortlessly artistic, able to break free of his father?s strict fishing instructions to create his own poetry with a rod. Surely, something holy must reside in the sheer, effortless beaut...
The time period this work takes place in is a very gloomy and frightening time. He wakes up in a dark place by himself and in fear, which makes things worse. A common theme we can relate this dark place to is when we fall off of the path of God. Since God represents all things good, the dark is the exact opposite. Since everything is not so clear in the wood he his describing, the path back to God is even more difficult to attain.
Bingley, he realises he has not got much of a chance with her, so then
According to author Jane Austen, “Vanity and pride are diverse things; however the words are frequently utilized synonymously. A man might be pleased without being vain. “Pride relates more to our sentiment of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others consider us.” Who was Jane Austen? What kind of woman was she in the world she lived in? Did she ever find love so indefinable in her own novel? Jane Austen appeared on the scene on December sixteenth, 1775. Jane was born to Reverend George Austen of the Steventon parsonage and Cassandra Austen of the Leigh family. She was to be their seventh youngster and just the second girl to the couple. Her kin were made up to a great extent of siblings,
In the short story "Cornet at night" by Sinclair Ross foreshadowing plays a very important role in the piece of literature. Foreshadowing is the slight hint or clue that the author gives the reader to see how they can get the reader to imagine the vast amount of possibilities of what is to come in the future. In this story, foreshadowing is seen at many different times, but there are two instances where they are noted very strongly.
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)"
Kumar, Udaya. The Joycean Labyrinth: Repetition, Time, and Tradition in Ulysses. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991.
In Dubliners, James Joyce tells short stories of individuals struggling with life, in the city of Dublin. “It is a long road that has no turning” (Irish Proverb). Many individuals fight the battle and continue on the road. However, some give up and get left behind. Those who continue to fight the battle, often deal with constant struggle and suffering. A reoccurring theme, in which Joyce places strong emphasis on, is the constant struggle of fulfilling responsibilities. These responsibilities include; work, family and social expectations. Joyce writes about these themes because characters often feel trapped and yearn to escape from these responsibilities. In “The Little Cloud”, “Counterparts”, and “The Dead” characters are often trapped in unhappy living situations, often leading to a desire of escape from reality and daily responsibilities.
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.
Ulysses opens with Buck Mulligan calling Stephen a "fearful jesuit" and mocking church rituals as he shaves (Joyce, Ulysses 3). The two main characters of this novel, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom have each fallen from their respective faiths. They both suffer for their religious affiliations; Bloom is excluded and h...
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.
Natali , Ilaria. "A Portrait of James Joyce’s Epiphanies." . Humanicus, n.d. Web. 2 May 2014.
The women which Stephen comes across in his journey in becoming an artist define him and change him by nurturing him, fascinating him, and inspiring him. Stephen was forever changed by his mother, the Virgin Mary, Eileen, the prostitute, and the seaside woman. The object of the artist is to create the object of the beautiful, I argue that it was the beauty in the women of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which created the artist in the end.
Stephen's Journey to Maturation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce