What one reviewer said about A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man (Twentieth-Century Classics) by James Joyce, Seamus Deane:
A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man is a gripping novel about a boy's coming of age and struggle of growing up in Ireland. It's most often seen as James Joyce's life in retrospect. This book is about Stephen Dedalus' struggle with growing up, fitting in with society, and questions about religion.
It begins as Stephen recounts his early years beginning at the age of six and attending the prestigious Congowes Boarding School. His parents are always in debt and barely scraped enough money to send him there. He goes to Belvedere College the next year because his parents can no longer afford to send him to that school. There he excels in writing and acting, yet does not have the religious fervency that his mother has, nor the political passion his father possesses. He longs for someone to understand him. He doesn't have many friends, yet longs to fit in. He happens to fall into the arms of a prostitute, and therefore goes through with his first sexual encounter. Afterward he feels the hot shame of his sins and momentarily embraces Catholicism. He desperately wants forgiveness of his sins when he goes to a church retreat for his school. There the priest preaches about the damnation of hell and repentance. Stephen feels that the sermons are directed to him and goes to confess his sins to a priest who could care less. He continues to go to Mass everyday, and later his sins come back to him and he feels as though his confession was not legitimate. A priest from his school notices his newfound piety, and asks him if he would think seriously about becoming a priest. Stephen later goes to a beach to think and suddenly an epiphany happens before his eyes. He's seriously contemplating the action of becoming a priest when he sees a beautiful girl standing in the water. As he walks away from her, he realizes that it is not a bad thing to want the beautiful things in life. Everything in Ireland is now frustrating him, and he concludes that the only way that he could be happy is to leave Ireland and become an artist. There is a lot of symbolism with birds. Dedalus is a person in Greek mythology whose father made him wings to fly. This was Stephen's opportunity to fly away from all his problems there and to fly away from the person he once was.
Personally, I liked this book. It showed me how some people do suffer over certain things. Stephen tried to be part of the crowd in every aspect of his life, yet he didn't fit in anywhere. He was tormented over his sin with the harlot, only to discover that it wasn't a bad thing to want beauty. I love how he is happy in the end, even though it is leaving his beloved country. He felt freed from a lifetime of restraint and confusion, and for the first time felt good about life. This is a book of renewal and self- discovery, and I would recommend this classic book to any one I know.
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