Birds

One of the smaller symbols in this book was in the last section when Stephan touches on how he was watching birds in flight. He brings up so many observations about the birds that parallel with his own life. The birds make him think of his last name and the story behind it when he says “ A sense of fear of the unknown moved in the heart of his weariness, a fear of symbols and portents, of the hawk like man whose name he bore..” (244). At this point in the novel Stephen is struggling to figure out just how to make him self an individual. Later on in the book he talks to his friend about leaving the University and his friends and family behind. This is the “sense of fear and unknown”. The birds make him contemplate whether his actions of isolating himself from his family and friends will have positive or negative results. “But was it for his folly that he was about to leave forever the house of prayer..to which he had been born and the order of life out of which he had come?”.
He knows what he wants to do just as Dedelius knew what he wanted to do, but when he goes about doing it he gets scared of the unknown. Although the birds make him think of the fears in what he is doing, they can also symbolize his freedom. His freedom from the church and from his parents judgments, “souring out of captivity”. He says that as he looks at these birds, his mothers face appears. This is because she is one of the many people that he feels is holding him back from being a true artist.



“ It humiliated him and shamed him to think that he would never be freed from it wholly, however holily he might live or whatever virtues or perfections he might attain..a feeling of restless guilt would always be present within him..I have amended my life, have I not?”

This quote was one of my favorites because when I was reading about all of these horrible things that he was making himself do I could not stop thinking how ridicules he was being. And when he finally questioned what he was doing I couldn’t help but let out a YES FINALLY!, to myself. The organization of this entire section is important. IT starts off with him listing everything that he does to keep himself a holy person. “Each of his senses was brought under a rigorous discipline”. As the section goes on, his paragraphs get longer and longer, and suddenly he goes informing the reader of what he is doing, to letting the reader know how it affects him emotionally. This part is important because it is one of the first times that Stephen takes notice that his life really isn’t all that much better off than it had been. I also think that the extreme exaggeration of his actions in becoming a better person is necessary for his rebirth later on in the book.
This quote and section of the book is also important because this experience gives him a taste of what priest hood would be like. Although Stephen does not come out and say that he does not like this way of life, the language suggests that he is not enjoying it. Although he has gone through all of this self-discipline, he still recognizes that he is still temped by sin as in the quote above. The play on words using “wholly” and “holily” is significant in tying the thoughts that he will never get rid of all his sins, even when he puts his trust in the holy spirit.


A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was not one of my favorite books we have read this year. There were parts about the book that were interesting but many parts of the book that I did not understand fully why they were even there for in the first place. The stream of consciousness writing was at times hard to follow with him jumping around so much. The book also got difficult to understand because there were no quotations or any form of punctuation when people were talking, and although that is an important part of this books syntax, it nevertheless made it hard to distinguish between the characters talking. There were some things that I did like about the book. I did enjoy the beginning of the book when he was a child telling the story, and I can appreciate how hard that must have been for Joyce to try and remember the thoughts that were going through his read as young as he went back to. I also liked to see how Stephen gradually realized that the church should not make him feel so guilty about just living his own life because I found a subject like that easy to relate to. All in all, it was interesting to read about Stephens self journey, but was not one of my favorite books purely because I could not get a grasp some of the important sections of the book.