Stephen's mind asks constantly -- Who am I in the Universe?

1 )At first Stephen's Universe is his family; Stephen is clearly the center of that Universe. The eldest son is the favored son in a Catholic family.

While Stephen's role in the family, at this point is clear, even as an infant he is struggling with the question of what is a "son" "father" "mother." These questions will remain central to his struggles to define himself as a person and an artist.

"His father told him that story; his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face . . . His mother had nicer smell than his father" (1).

2) Stephen is never really comfortable in the world, but he becomes moreso when he is sent to school at Conglowes. (This is the first in a series of exiles in the book. How many other exiles can you think of within the first two chapters?). In a school room scene we Stephen trying to comprehend and fix his place in the Universe. Stephen always attempts to get his bearings through the medium of language. (Is this strategy particular to Stephen; In other words, do you think Joyce is illustrating what's "universal" about coming to consciousness through language? or do you think that Stephen's struggle with language is indicative of his predilection toward life as an artist?)

Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe

Note: See parallel passage beginning "I am Stephen Dedalus . . ." on page 65

(Why does Joyce juxtapose this list with Stephen's meditation on the different names for God? What anxiety is he illustrating/suggesting?)

"How does God know where I am? and when anyone prayed to God and said Dieu then God knew at once that is a French person that was praying" (7-8).

Stephen and Authority

Over and over Stephen finds himself witnessing collisions of authority or colliding with authority himself. The collisions are often attached to memories, images or experience of punishment

1) At Conglowes Wells asks, "Do you kiss your mother?" There are only two possible answers, one points to a relationship that is "neurotically close" or "unnaturally distant" (Mahaffey 59). (Note what Stephen says to this question when posed by Cranley in Chapter 5)

According to Mahaffey, who sees the believes that Joyce's works illustrate the premise that Mahaffey -- Author/Authority "authority may be exercised in ways that are humorous, celebratory, and unoppressive." Portrait is a book about constructing this sort of authority. See Mahaffey's Reauthorizing Joyce.

2) Politics -- Dante vs. Father Is Parnell a King or a sinner? (What is notable about the way this question is asked? How many answers are there? What are the consequences of choosing one or the other?)

He wondered which was right to be for the green or for the maroon, because Dante had ripped the green velvet back off the brush that was for Parnell one day wither her scissors and had told him that Parnell was a bad man. He wondered if they were arguing at home about that. That was called politics. There wer two sides in it: Dante was on one side and his father and Mr. Casey were on the other side but his mother and Uncle Charles were on no side (8).

Christmas Dinner Scene (18-25)

"--A nice answer, said Dante, for any man calling himself a Catholic priest" (19).

"--Certainly, said Dante. It is a question of public morality. A pries would not be a pries if he did not tell his flock what is right and what is wrong. (19)"

3) Pandying scene. Stephen is punished for the consequences of an accident.

Father Dolan to Stephen "Why aren't you writing like the others?" This is a question to which there is no "right" answer, or "wrong" answer for that matter. Father Dolan can't be mollified.

In each of these cases Stephen is trapped in a double bind. If he chooses one of the answers offered, he is "punished." In a sense Stephen is trapped by his naive and uncomplicated belief in right answers. A "right" answer in each of these questions would please the authority. But there is no such answer. But the way the questions are phrased cause Stephen confusion and suffering. Do notice that Stephen's knows an answer to Father Dolan's question, in that telling what happened to his glasses would satisfy some authority figures. The depth of Father's tyranny is measured by the extent to which subjectively and cruelly defines "the right answer"

4) Stephen's rebellion against authority and his "victory" are constructed out of his understanding of how history works. He is turning to history to find out who he is in the universe. Stephen gets courage to stand up for himself from history.

"The Senate and the Roman people declared that Dedalus had been wrongly punished" (36) "He would go up and tell the rector that he had been wrongly punished. A thing like that had been done before by somebody in history, by some great person whose head was in the books of history. And the rector would declare that he been wrongly punished because the senate and the Roman people always declared that me who did that had been wrongly punished. History was all about those men and what they did" (36) (This is a very Victorian notion of history -- Carlyle argued that history was the history of Great Men. It is also a very secular view of history. Christian history is the history of martyrdom and self-sacrifice. If Stephen were thinking of his religious upbringing, he probably would not act to justify himself. Also, note that in the chapter's references to Napoleon we get "a great man" who is said to be "a model Christian of sort" because the day of his first communion was the happiest day of his life. (What do you make of this allusion? Napoleon is a great man, but not a hero. Also, the sacrament of the Eucharist celebrates the unity of the faithful community, with each other, with self, with Christ, with Christian history. Joyce seems to be making a very ironic commentary here. How would you articulate his point?)

5) Athy's Riddle (61)

From Athy's point of view there is only one answer to the riddle. The other way to ask it: When is a man not a man? When he is a thigh. Notice that Athy knows another way to ask it, but he does not articulate it. The reader of Joyce's novel needs to know Finnegans Wake to understand this full. A central riddle there: When is a man not a man? Answer: When he is a Sham? Hence, When is a man not a man? Answer: When he is a thigh. (Riddles are all over Joyce's work? Given what we know about Stephen, his struggles with language, why do you think Joyce would have found riddles to be such a suggestive symbol and form?) A riddle might be read as the linguistic counterpart of labyrinth. One must o rise above the language of a riddle, just as Icarus had to rise above the walls of the maze, to solve the puzzle.. To answer a one must be able to look at the words from a new perspective.

Chapter Two

(What is the significance of Charles? How is Charles situation a microcosm of Stephen's experience in this section? Note Stephen's affinity for Uncle Charles at the start of the chapter, see page 41 of our text)

Exiled to the outhouse
He is a burden on domestic atmosphere
He sings songs about Ireland
He gradually becomes disconnected from the family (decline and death is described as a fading)

From Chapter One: Charles tries to make peace at the Christmas dinner. He does not offer a third perspective. He speaks out of regard/desire for the predictablility of domestic peace. "--Come now, come now, come now! Can we not have our opinions whatever they are without this bad temper and this bad language (emphasis mine). It is too bad surely. (22)

"--take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? There're good for your bowels (42)." Excrement is usually a positive symbol in Joyce. (What might Joyce be saying here about the importance of Charles to Stephen?)

How does Stephen change in the chapter? What images/experiences recur?
Frustrated impulses, desires

--wants but fails to kiss E.C. (48)
--Foetus inscription/legend (63)
--The pot of pink enamel paint gave out and the wainscot of is bedroom remained with its unfinished and ill plastered coat (69).
--"How foolish his aim had been! He had tired to build a breakwater order" (69).

Stephen's feelings/experience of being disconnected from others/self

--"Stephen knelt at his side respecting, though he did not share, his piety" (42)
at the children's party he sits by the fire as the others celebrate (47)
--new perspective on his moment of triumph at Clongowes -- ironic distance (50)
--very distanced view of his father "He understood little or nothing of it at first but he became slowly aware that his father had enemies and that some fight was going to take place" (45).
--"He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood" (58).
--"He listened without sympathy to his father's evocation of Cord and of scenes of his youth . . . "(61).
--"The memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim. He tried to forth some of its vivid moments but cold not. He recalled only names. Dante, Parnell, Clane, Clongoews. A little boy had been taught geograph by an old woman who kept two brushes in her wardrobe" (65).

Stephen as a wanderer (Byronic hero?)

--"Stephen was glad to go with him on these errands . . . " (41).
--"Aubrey and Stephen had a common milkman and often they rove out in the milkcar" (43).
--"He was travelling with his father by the night mail to Cork" (61).
--"He returned to his wanderings. The veiled autumnal evenings led him from street to street as they had led him years before along the quite avenues of Blackrock" (69).--"He had wandered into a maze of narrow and dirty streets" (70).

Demands that Stephen submit to authority

--Stephen withdraws his heretical wording/disavows essay (55)
--"In any case Byron was a heretic and immoral too" (56)
--No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn't smoke and he doesn't go to bazaars and he doesn't flirt and he doesn't damn anything or damn all" (53).

Stephen's experience of reverie/private creative life

--"His evenings were his own; and pored over a ragged translation The Count of Monte Cristo" (43).
--". . . in this house, he told himself, another Mercedes lived" (43).
--"The sudden legend startled his blood; he seemed to feel the absent students of the college about him and to shrink from their company. A vision of their life, which his father's words had been powerless to evoke, sprang up before out of the wood cut in the desk . . .(63).

Compare the closing scene of Chapter One with the Closing Scene of Chapter Two. What's your reaction to incident of "rebellion"? Is it a rebellion? What, if anything, is Stephen liberated from here? What motivates this "rebellion"?