Nadhrah Bte Zainalabiden (A0157239X)

Dr Gilbert Yeoh
EN3224: Twentieth Century
22nd November 2018

Stephen Dedalus: A Sympathetic Hero?

James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man observes tells the story of Stephen

Dedalus through the years and the conflicts he faces with regards to religion that clashes with his

inner voice. On the surface, Stephen’s transition from being a strict devotee of his religion to the

other extreme of flouting the fixed moralities that had once defined him may paint him in an

unfavourable light. However, Joyce’s depiction of Stephen’s story and struggles relayed through

his consciousness and internal voice as well as his highly visionary wordplay presents the

character in a more sympathetic and even heroic way.

In conforming to the mode of a modernist Bildungsroman, Joyce’s presentation of Stephen’s

progress throughout his years reveals his limited and erroneous perspective of innocence and

experience that results in his continuous inner conflict, eliciting a sense of sympathy from the

readers. His shock in discovering the existence “in the outer world a trace of what he had deemed

till then a brutish and individual malady of his own mind” (95) reveals his disbelief at how the

external and public realm expresses the inner tumult that he often experiences. This very

disbelief therefore displays how the thoughts and senses he undergoes are extremely confined to

himself, illuminating his hesitance to delve in them due to their supposedly immoral nature. The

utilisation of negative terms such as “brutish” and “malady” further underline that he considers

his inner thoughts and senses as especially profane as his idea of innocence and rightness are

heavily influenced by religious conceptions of sin and purity. Joyce continues to expound on
Stephen’s increasing cynicism and harshness towards himself as he expresses that “his monstrous

way of life...seemed to have put himself beyond the limits of reality” (98), indicating how the

repression of his thoughts which he internalised as wrong while growing up have resulted in a

sense of guilt in an eventual stage of his life, thereby causing him to experience a sense of

displacement within the world. Stephen’s transition to maturity within the modernist

Bildungsroman thus discloses his growing self-reproach that evidently stems from the way he

was raised, yet his immense sense of disgrace towards himself highlights his conflict in fully

comprehending his own identity as well as the world around him. The use of the harsh and

jarring word “monstrous” in relation to his way of life advances the notion that Stephen views

his thoughts and actions in an unforgiving manner merely due to his transgression of the strict

religious boundaries that had stifled his identity in the first place. Beyond experiencing a sense of

inner turmoil, Stephen’s perspective that “he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had

feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess” (110) after sinning accentuates his

sense of a deep-seated fear of breaching the moral code that he has unconsciously assimilated in

his mind. The feeling of “a wave of vitality pass(ing) out of him” points to the severity of said

assimilation as the imposed idea of morality mires him with a persistent sense of guilt, hindering

him from feeling comfortable about discovering himself and the world. His internalisation of

right and wrong while growing up that are profoundly defined by Christianity and the inner

conflict he encounters through his years therefore shows how Stephen struggles greatly with

grappling between conforming to his religion’s idea of morality versus his own internally

confined desires, painting him as a sympathetic character who is simply acting on his aspirations.
Through the novel’s characteristic modernist focus on consciousness, readers are therefore

exposed to how the limited perspective in which Stephen develops contributes to his struggle in

grappling with his identity, miring his life in ambivalence and confusion. From such a young age,

Stephen is only able to identify himself according to the people around him, exemplified by how

he sees himself as the “baby tuckoo” (3) in his father’s tale, identifying himself through the

words of his father. Here, Joyce molds the beginnings of a disorderly inner voice of a young

individual who is unable to situate himself within the society he lives in, extending to his later

years as well. This disorientation due to his endeavour of establishing a sense of self continues

throughout Stephen’s growth and can be observed through his consciousness. Stephen’s

conception of himself demonstrates his displacement, exhibited in his matter-of-fact description:

“I am Stephen Dedalus. I am walking beside my father whose name is Simon Dedalus.

We are in Cork, in Ireland. Cork is a city. Our room is in the Victoria Hotel. Victoria and

Stephen and Simon. Simon and Stephen and Victoria. Names.” (98)

His outlook on names and mere physical proximity to a location underscores his lack of

comprehension of selfhood. Stephen only knowing names without understanding their

significance also stresses how his conception of the self is one that is very superficial. His act of

being a “model youth” who “doesn’t smoke” and “doesn’t damn anything or damn all” (80)

emphasises the disconnection between his disgruntled, internal self and the exemplary, external

world. Here, Joyce depicts Stephen’s conflict of identity through the disjuncture between his

thoughts and the real world. His sense of self is also often compromised and steered by the

people around him rather than himself, hampering his identity:

 “he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and of his masters, urging him

to be a gentleman...he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and

healthy...a worldly voice would bid him raise up his father's fallen state by his labours”

(88)

His ability to only hear “voices of his father and of his masters”, “another voice” and a “worldly

voice” signals at Stephen’s life being dictated by everyone but him, contributing to his confused

and perhaps even lack of sense of self. The commanding terms used such as “urging” and “bid”

further supports this idea that his way of life and his perspective on things are imposed on him by

the people around him, preventing him from constructing his own identity. His view of how “he

had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a

living mass of corruption” (148) again demonstrates the discrepancy he undergoes with the

external realm as opposed to his inner thoughts. Hence, through Stephen’s consciousness, readers

are exposed to Stephen’s identity war as he attempts to reconcile his internal and external

domains.

Though Stephen is depicted as a sympathetic figure, it could also be argued that he is painted in a

heroic light as he subsequently breaks out of the religious perspectives that previously restricted

him from establishing his identity, proving that fixed maxims often hinders the potential of

individual achievements. The adults’ disagreement regarding the issue of “morality” as as one

believes strongly that “A priest would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and

what is wrong” (30) acts as a preamble to Stephen’s own, eventual difficulties with religion. His

faith in the rightness of religion which has shaped his perspective begins to waver, indicating the

beginnings of his transgression. Stephen’s scepticism towards religion is concretised by his later
repulsion towards Christian-related element as “Their dull piety and the sickly smell of the cheap

hair-oil with which they had anointed their heads repelled him from the altar they prayed at”

(111). Here, Stephen discerns the religious aspects with physical aversion, hinting at his

detachment from his smothering religion. In seeing how the priest’s face is merely “a mirthless

reflection of the sunken day”, Stephen “detached his hand slowly which had acquiesced faintly

in the companionship” (173), implying his sense of disturbance at the priest’s lack of joy and

happiness to the abrupt burst of music. Stephen’s unfavourable reaction to the priest’s absence of

emotion also signals at his disconnection from religion and the revival of his aesthetic sense of

beauty. Readers also witness Stephen’s ultimate liberation as he describes how “His soul was

soaring in an air beyond the world and the body he knew was purified in a breath and delivered

of incertitude and made radiant and commingled with the element of the spirit” (183), where he

begins to disjoin his personal spirituality from the confines of religion. This freedom and

boundlessness he experiences starkly juxtaposes his initial, impassivity that denoted his

religiosity. Stephen’s realisation of “the call of life to his soul” that is “not the dull gross voice of

the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman voice that had called him to the pale service of

the altar” (184) foregrounds his fulfilment of his sense of self that can only be established by

passing the nets of religion. Thus, Stephen’s ability to escape the restrictive and stifling periphery

of his religion which enables him to form his own identity coupled with the difficulty in

achieving this state of liberation paints him as a heroic figure.

In conclusion, Joyce’s coming of age novel detailing the growth of Stephen who struggles with

his attitude towards religion and the self before transcending the rigid confinements of
Christianity presents Stephen as a sympathetic character who ultimately emerges heroic. The

novel’s characteristic modernist feature of encapsulating true reality through the protagonist’s

inner life and consciousness reveals Stephen’s ability to overcome his challenges and inner

turmoil. Stephen’s arrival in a modern realm where his traditional, religious beliefs are broken

down also unveils his ability to transcend the very beliefs that had restrained him and his

perspective. Therefore, A Portrait of the Young Artist as a Young Man invites its readers to view

Stephen as a sympathetic and heroic figure.

(1621 words)
 Work Cited

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Penguin Classics, 2000.