Learning how to Fly

In this blogpost, I’m exploring a different interpretation of the Dedalus/Icarus dynamic in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

            Everything that Stephen is trying to escape in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can be boiled down to one word: monotony. He is very romantic, intellectual, and has an innate sense of being different from and superior to everyone else. Stephen (even if he doesn’t always recognize or admit it) feels he has to go soaring above and beyond what anyone else can do much like his namesake soars above the labyrinth designed to constrain him. Connected to this, Stephen is constantly on the look-out for mysterious, enlightening experiences and goes through several of what seem to be these transformative moments. However, in nearly every case, Stephen’s attempts to transcend end with him plunging back into the ocean of monotony.

            The first major example of this is Stephen’s desire for an encounter with a Mercedes-like woman in which “weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him” and how he goes about encountering such a woman. At the end of chapter two, Stephen “wander[s] into a maze of narrow and dirty streets” and a woman reaches out to stop him, much like in his fantasies.  If we ignore the identity of the woman and the reason she stopped Stephen, the scene in her room can be read as a beautiful, transformative experience for Stephen in which he briefly soars above the maze of dirty streets outside. However, this doesn’t last long. Even on the next page, Stephen’s “wanderings” to the neighborhood containing the brothels are no longer sugar-coated, and in addition have become simply part of his regular routine.

            Stephen experiences something similar when he confesses at the end of chapter three and turns back to the Church after fancying himself for some time to be the worst sinner who ever lived. Immediately following his confession, Stephen seems happier and more connected to something emotionally than we have ever seen him. “The muddy streets were gay. He strode homeward, conscious of an invisible grace pervading and making light his limbs … His soul was made fair and holy once more, holy and happy.” However, Stephen again immediately takes this religious epiphany and reduces it to routine. A page in a half later he has his prayers reduced to a list of tasks to be done at specific times, is completely detached from them emotionally, and sees religion more as a way to get out of going to hell than anything else.

            Although Stephen’s decision to leave Ireland and pursue art looked like it might end in the same way, it was instead what finally broke the pattern. We don’t know this from the book, but based on our discussion of Joyce’s life after he left Ireland this feels to me like a reasonable claim. Joyce creates art as Stephen defines it, and never reduces it to merely a routine. Throughout his career he was constantly pushing to do something new, and each of his four books was dramatically different from the others. Much as Dedalus used his art to escape from the labyrinth, it is art that finally frees Stephen from the monotony that had previously defined his life.