Identify and discuss archetypal characters, objects and situations that appear in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.You can find lists of archetypes online (you can start here: http://central.wmrhsd.org/FACULTY_FILES/rkipp/LINK_DOCS_1015/Archetypesandsymbols.pdf). Do not repeat analysis from other posts. In your post, be sure to include specific quotes from the text, with page numbers, to support your conclusions.
In Joyce’s “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,” the author uses the light and dark archetype in order to contrast Clongowes and Cork. While at school, Stephen describes everything as cold and dark. Even the sun only provides a “pale sunlight” (Joyce 17) to stream through the windows. The darkness affects him as the “darkness of his soul sought no outlet,” (Joyce 56) piercing his very being. In contrast, when Stephen visits Cork with his father, “bright warm sunlight” (Joyce 77) greets them. As opposed to the cold, dark college, Cork is a “warm sunny city” (Joyce 77). The very “leaves of the trees… were astir and whispering in the sunlight” (Joyce 79), exemplifying the growth and vitality Stephen feels in Cork. While in the safety of the city, he reflects on his college experience and says that at Clongowes, he “dreamed of being dead” (Joyce 81). Not exactly dead, “he had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost or wandering out of existence” (Joyce 81) and he then resolves to adjust his life in order to remain in the sun. By contrasting darkness in Clongowes with light in Cork, Joyce shows Stephen questioning his experiences at the college and beginning a dynamic character shift.
ReplyDeleteChapter 5 - Now, Where Have I Seen Her Before? And Interlude: One Story
ReplyDeleteThomas C. Foster explains, “there’s only one story” (Foster 34) endlessly repeated. All literature branches off one story: the story of humanity and human nature. Foster later writes, “pure originality is impossible” (187), which means one story acts as the basis to authors’ works, but the authors change the characters, whether their name is different or appearance, to mold the story around the message the writers ultimately convey. Since only one story exists, in different forms, readers experience familiarity and repetitiveness of multiple works noticing archetypal characters, objects, and situations of that one story. James Joyce displays such archetypes in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, represents the story’s Hero because he matures through his initiation, a situation archetype. Stephen first mentions he will undergo a transformation when he imagines Mercedes. Stephen knows his image of Mercedes “would encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they know each other and had made their tryst...alone, surrounded by darkness and silence” (Joyce 56). His encounter would transform him, so “his weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him” (56). Stephen desires his own Mercedes, a lover, a temptress.
Joyce not only illustrates archetypal characters but also objects and situations. Red, green, fire, Heaven versus Hell, and Light versus Darkness are symbolic archetypes that act as connections between Joyce’s novel and the one endlessly repeating story. The colors red and green appear multiple times throughout the novel as symbols. Red symbolizes blood, sacrifice, fire, and heat. Green represents hope, growth, envy, and nature. Joyce mentions both colors when he writes about Dante’s two brushes, one “with the maroon velvet back for Michael Davitt and the brush with the green velvet back for Parnell” (Joyce 5). Joyce also mentions white and red roses as two opposing teams. Stephen is on the white rose team, and receives a question, but cannot think of the answer becasue “the sum was too hard and he felt confused” (10) which results in victory for the red rose team. Again, the colors create differing opinions which symbolizes conflict.
Joyce commonly mentions fire throughout the novel. Fire represents life, love and transformation, which Joyce seamlessly weaves through the pages. Joyce first mentions fire at the Christmas dinner, “A great fire, banked high and red, flamed in the grate and under the ivytwined branches of the chandelier the Christmas table was spread” (Joyce 23). Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Christ, to love and kiss under the mistletoe, and transform everything with Christmas decorations, so Joyce creates a huge burning fire to complement the time of year.
The situational archetype, Heaven versus Hell, is the key to Stephen’s personal guilt, and conflict. On Earth, Stephen continues to sin because “time was to sin and to enjoy” (Joyce 98). Each sin he commits increases his guilt which worsens the conflict within himself. He constantly battles himself by thinking about his judgment day and how his sins will effect whether he goes to Heaven or Hell. Later in the novel, Joyce explains his view of Hell stating, “Hell is a strait and dark and foulsmelling prison, and abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke”(105). He then continues, “It is a fire which proceeds directly from the ire of God, working not of its own activity but as an instrument of divine vengeance” (107). In other words, Hell is God’s punishment to those who sin. Contrastingly, Heaven is an everlasting peace to those who remain faithful.
Now this may be a little inappropriate, but let’s talk about prostitutes. Towards the conclusion of chapter 2, Stephen feels a deep desire to “sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin” (Joyce 87). In attempts to settle his lustful torments, Stephen begins wandering the streets “peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound” (Joyce 87) until he encounters his temptation head on. When Stephen first follows the young woman with the pink dress into her “warm and lightsome” (Joyce 88) room, he is at first reluctant to kiss her, but eventually surrenders to her lust. Now where have we seen this scene before? Young Stephen Dedalus does not experience a unique encounter, in fact, his encounter with temptation that appears all throughout literary history. Remember our friend Eve (from the bible that is)? Eve, just as Stephen does, struggles to fight the temptation to give into the devil and against God’s will eats the forbidden fruit. Temptation continuously reappears in literature because its presence always relatable in the eyes of audience. This exemplifies exactly what Foster means when he states that there is only one story of human nature endlessly repeated.
ReplyDeleteMany archetypal characters are present throughout James Joyce's, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," one of them being Stephen Dedalus. When the reader meets Stephen, they find him to be a quiet, solitude person. He "keeps on the fringe of his line...out of the reach of the rude feet" of his classmates, proving that he is the main, yet "outcast" character in the novel (Joyce 6). Stephen becomes an outcast because he has a different outlook on life, and he chooses to separate himself from others. Furthermore, like an outcast character, he ends up being a wanderer, searching for freedom and peace in his life. Even though he outcasts himself, he does have a friendship with Cranlyn Readers find that Cranly is the person who Stephen relies on the most when he wants to discuss his problems and different beliefs. In the end though, Stephen leaves his religious beliefs and friendship, pushing himself away from society, displaying his individualistic, and almost heroic manner. Likewise, heroes find themselves going through a journey of their own, without the things or people they love beside them, to reach a goal. Throughout the novel, Stephen was going through an individualistic journey, in order to find freedom. Therefore, Stephen is an outcast, a wanderer, and ultimately a hero for going after a goal that seems impossible to achieve.
ReplyDeleteAfter seeing the part of the novel where a boy questions Stephen’s last name, I wondered if Joyce intentionally included the question, leading readers to also question Stephen’s name. I did some research and found that is name is alluding to a Greek mythological figure named Daedalus who was an artisan. In a myth of Daedalus, he creates a labyrinth that he must escape. Stephen’s entire journey therefore, can be seen as archetypal of Daedalus’ as he must navigate through his own labyrinth, which is his development.
ReplyDeleteStephen, along his journey of self- fulfillment and maturation, experiences an internal battle of his opinion on the church. Stephen visits both extremes or religious opinion, both devoting his life to the Church and participating in a life of sin. Initially, Stephen appears to have a neutral opinion because of his thoughts on whether God understands people speaking different languages believing, “God remained always the same God and God’s real name was God” (Joyce 14). During Stephen’s early years he does not appear passionate about religion but simply accepting of the fact there is a God along with support of the Church, as it is all he has experienced in his young years. Stephen later struggles with the temptation of sin after a brief period of complete devotion and fascination with the Virgin Mary. Highlighted by his encounter with a prostitute, Stephen begins living a lifestyle extremely deviant of that preaches by the Church. Throughout the novel, Stephen’s confusion and difficulties in maturation show he is an archetypal character following the journey of his namesake, Daedalus.
Thomas C. Foster describes literature to be in sense, “only one story” (Foster 32) in Chapter 5 of his “How to Read Literature like a Professor.” In the same chapter, he speaks of the use of archetypes in different stories. James Joyce’s novel “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” is an archetypical tale of “the journey”, where the hero sets out in a journey in search of truth for the kingdom. However, before he is able to complete his journey, he falls into the dark abyss of painful truths and his own imperfections and overcome the darkness to return to the light with his new wisdom. For Stephen Dadelus, the protagonist of Joyce’s Novel, his kingdom was his own mind. A boy going to Clongowes, he is molded by his parents, religion and traditions, and by no way his own mind. As he grows, and readies himself into the world, he is met by the dark truths of a heartless world. Starting from when he was wrongly accused of being a “schemer before the class and…pandied” (Joyce 45) for not participating in the day’s work, to the acknowledgement of the “smuggling” activity, to the degradation of his family’s riches towards poverty, Stephen was bombarded by trials and mishaps from the real world. Finally breaking free from the shelter of boyhood, Stephen withdraws from the world in a “silent watchful manner” (Joyce 60) as he tries to organize his own mind to who he truly is. With his family falling further into poverty and acknowledging his inability to amend it with money, Stephen falls deeper into the dark world, into the arms of a prostitute. Sinning in terms of his religious background, he desperately scrounges for forgiveness and the rid of his guilt as he delves deeper into the dirty nightlife of Dublin. When Father Arnall makes a guest appearance in his school to preach about heaven and hell, Stephen’s fear skyrockets. At the point of almost addiction to the sin but craving for redemption, Stephen’s guilt drives him to the edge of sanity. Receiving forgiveness after finally confessing, Stephen later adopts a habit of not facing woman, with the fear of once again delving into the dark abyss of sin. Over time however, he begins to realize something more, gradually rejecting religious beauty and finding aesthetic beauty. Ultimately he realizes his own potential and need to live as his own self. He tells is friend Cranly, as well as an out loud confession to himself that he will “express…in some mode of life or are as freely as [he] can…[in] silence, exile and cunning,”(Joyce 218) proving that his desire to live with as himself will not be bounded. Like the hero in the archetype, Stephen found the truth of his kingdom and lives on using the wisdom he brings out from surviving the dark abyss.
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