"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" of James Joyce: MISCELLANEOUS objective questions Note 3

The images which symbolize liberation: The flight of birds, the voyage of sea-born clouds, the hawk like man flying sunward above the sea and the Holy Ghost.

The images which suggest bondage: The labyrinth of crete where Daedalus was confined the dark Corridors at Clongowes, the ‘maze of narrow and dirty Dublin streets, the net flung at the liberal spirits of Ireland.

‘confiteor’: ‘Confitear’, a Latin word, means ‘I confess’.

Francis Xavier: Saint Francis Xavier was one of the reputed preacher of Christianity. He was one of the first followers of St. Ignatius of Loyala whom he met at Paris and was greatly influenced by his preaching. Subsequently, he went to preach Christianity in Asia and other continents and converted almost ten thousand people in a month so he is called the Apostle of Indies. He was also the patron saint of Belvedere College, Stephen’s second

alamanater. The three day retreat in the school was held in his honour.

The wading girl in the midstream :The girl standing alone in the midstream is the image of beauty the be all and end all of all ar6tists. She stands for Stephen’s muse who pulls him towards his vocation as an artist.

Stephen’s weekdays distributed to the service of ‘God’:Confessing his sin to the priest Stephen thought that God had pardoned him and determined to lead a life of grace and virtue through the path of absolute mortification. He dedicated each day of the week to a different form of worship. Sunday was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, Monday to the Holy Ghost, Tuesday to the Most Blessed sacrament of the Alter, Friday to the suffering Jesus and Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

‘suck’ and Stephen’s reaction :Rody Kickham addressed Simon Moonan as MaGlade’s ‘suck’. ‘Suck’ was a queer word. Stephen recalls how water going down the holes of a basin in a Wicklow hotel made a similar sound.

Bildungsroman: Bildungsroman is a kind of fiction of the formation of a character describing its struggle from childhood towards maturity. Such novels had been written before. For example D. H. Lawrence’s sons and lovers, Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, Meredith’s The Ordeal of Richard Feveral etc.

A Portrait can be seen as a bildungsroman and as ‘aesthetic autobiography’. In the matter of stationing himself, Joyce keeps varying his distance from Stephen but never does so drastically. What happens in A Portrait is that the autobiographical element which is otherwise its very significant ingredient is consciously and painstakingly recast into a mode of depersonalization, objectification and mystification.  

The rain laden trees in the way to the University evoke: The rain laden trees in the way to the University always evoked in Stephen’s mind the memories of girls and women in the plays of Gerhard Hauptmann, a German dramatist.
‘foetus’ :Stephen found the word ‘foetus’ carved on a desk in the anatomy theatre of Queen’s College at Cork where he guided by his father made a visit. The word cut on the desk unveil the unvarnished truth that what he had deemed ‘a brutish and individual malady of his own mind’ is common to all. This realization drives Stephen to taste the mystery of sex.

 Ardhendu De

Related posts on this Novel:

• Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is the Search of an Artist in Exile.

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young is an ‘Aesthetic Autobiography’ of James Joyce

• ‘Aesthetic Autobiography’ -- a Satisfactory Description of the Genre of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young