James Joyce Critical Essay

In “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” James Joyce uses memory and different beliefs in order to lead Stephen Dedalus into a life where art is dominant over any other figure in life, placing him into a state of solitude. Throughout his life his influences change. Mr.Dedalus, his father, influences him with politics and believes that it is the future of Ireland while other characters like Dante believe strongly in the Church’s power over Ireland and believes it should not be challenged by anyone or anything. Both sides argue against one another and view things their own way. Other influences on Stephen immerge as he reaches manhood to develop his own thoughts and ideas.

Stephen Dedalus is constantly around the ideas of the church and of the ideas of political figures such as Parnell. Obviously, everything around him is greatly influenced by the Catholic Church, including himself. People around him are very devoted Catholics and are very strict on the ideas that they follow. But his father, Mr. Dedaulus, is political and is one who believes that the government should be run separately than the church. Stephen, split between these two ideas does not lean to any side. The memories of these ideas are both inscribed in his mind which creates a relationship that pushes him away from society and its offerings and closer to art.

Parnell and politics versus the Catholic Church was part of an argument that Mr. Dedalus, Mr.Casey, and Dante had one day during dinner. “‘I’ll pay you you dues, father, when you cease turning the house of God into a pollingbooth.’ ‘A nice answer, said Dante, for any man calling himself a catholic to give to his priest’”(Joyce 41). Dedalus along side Mr.Casey, believe the Catholic Church should not be a part of the government. They see the Church as a bad influence on people’s judgment when it is time to elect people into office. Dante disagrees. “‘It is religion, Dante said. They are doing their duty in warning the people’”(Joyce 41). Her belief is that the Catholic Church should not be questioned whatsoever. She feels they are warning people but the men see other wise saying “We go to the house of God, Mr.Casey said, in all humility to pray to our Maker and not to hear election addresses’”(Joyce 41). This conversation continues and becomes very argue mental creating a mimic of society. It is a very touchy subject for them and the people in Ireland. Though it is not stated, Dedalus and Casey seem to blame the Catholic Church for the death of Parnell. They saw him as the future leader of Ireland to help the people get out of the struggle that they go through on a day to day basis. He was a very important figure to them. Joyce places all these talks about Parnell and politics to show the reader that everybody is torn into two sides of this subject, even friends and family alike. Though they are at dinner, an argument arises which seems to get intense that Mr. Dedalus and Mr.Casey try to end before it gets out of control but Dante refuses. She is too shocked by the words coming out of their mouths over the Church.

Stephen, no matter where he is, is constantly hearing things about Parnell and politics even though he may not understand all of it so clearly. This is brought up constantly by James Joyce in order to emphasize the importance and the influence this had on everybody’s ideas. Not only is Parnell shown to us by Joyce but he is also shown to Stephen in order for him to know the truth of everything going on around him. While he is walking with his father he realizes he cannot remember much of his childhood but remembers a few names. “‘The memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim. He tried to call forth some of its vivid moments but could not. He recalled only names: Dante, Parnell, Clane, Clongowes’”(Joyce 92). Out of the names he states, Parnell is one of them. This further emphasizes that Joyce is showing the important of politics more and more. Parnell is a significant character since he did play a great role in Ireland even when the Church seemed to go against him. Stephen continues by saying “‘Parnell had died. There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and no procession. He had not died but he had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost or had wandered out of existence for he no longer existed’”(Joyce 92). Joyce bring this up because it shows how the Catholic Church tried to get rid of all the ideas Parnell had brought up by even going as far as pretending that he did not existence. Parnell was a big threat to the Catholic Church’s power so his existence was erased. He still remained remembered though, even by Stephen. The Church’s attempt did not seem to work.

Even though politics and church lead Stephen to different ideas and beliefs, they are opposing forces are these forces are necessary according to psychoanalytic criticism. “Art is built on the same drives, conscious and unconscious, that operate in life”(Lesser 59-144). Thought the beliefs in church and state are against each other, both are required in order to have a balance. Stephens’s ideas are shaped by both politics and the church. If one were to be absent, he would not have developed into who he is. Art would not be what he pursues if politics was not shown to him at a young age. He could have ended up as a priest or anything in relation to the church. “Nor is it true that art ‘cannot awaken…an emotion which is kinetic’: there is no such thing as nonkinetic emotion, only emotion whose kinesis is relatively weak or indirect”(Lesser 59-144). Stephen’s emotion toward art has always been there and is just getting stronger with these ideas that have been around him since he was a kid. As he started to grow older, other ideas were taken in by Stephen. Anything he would hear he would take in. Now grown up, the ideas have been filtered and transformed into it’s own idea which is art which is why “Art is built on the same drives, conscious and unconscious, that operate in life”(Lesser 59-144). The relationship between politics and church has created art. But to Stephen, art is much more than what his father and other people see it as. Art is life to him so the balance is there for the sake of his future and his passion. “If this balance is not achieved and drives obtrude in such a way that they violate truth, morality, or some other function of psychic balance, the work is dismissed as pornographic or didactic, cheap or prohibitive, untrue or unhealthy”(Brivic 293). Life, or art, without one side to balance itself out, cannot exist. It must coexist with its opposite in order for it to arise. With this, Joyce shows that there are always two sides to everything. Stephen has his art but is opposed by church and politics since it is its own form of freedom. Stephen does not need the church or politics. In fact he does not even want them. He simply needs art and only art in his life in order to live in this world. His preference of having art over having anything else is strong. Art is the dominant figure in his life. It is what helps him choose his path in life, all because of the ideas he was introduced to as a child.

Dominance of the church in Stephens mind started out when he was a baby because of society and his family. As he grew older and could understand conversations that others had, politics became another influence which changed his views on the church. Politics did not take over church but instead formed new ideas and new desires in life. Out of these two influences came his love for art. Art is seen is feminine to his father and is not accepted by him at all but Stephen follows what he knows is his calling in life. Joyce places him in a position where art is really all he can look at and see perfection in order to show that people are not perfect and Stephen knows this. Stephen attempts to see other people as perfect and pure, like his mother, but in the back of his mind he knows that this is not true. These ideas are there so he can balance out the corrupt with the “pure.” Since his mother is not exactly pure and nobody else is, he cannot turn to people for his search of perfection. Objects are all he can really see as being pure to him. Whatever he creates in his mind is pure since it is what he has been searching for since he was a little. His mother was his first imagine of perfection, then he met other people throughout his everyday life and finally began making up his own people in his mind which he saw as perfect. And they could be perfect or they could be the opposite of perfect since they were all his creation, his art.

Stephen’s desires are also seen as his art according to feminist criticism. “In sociological terms this attractive young woman, approached and courted, might well threaten Stephen with the kind of domestic entrapment associated with Catholic marriage”(Henke 329). Joyce makes Stephen create many women which he sees differently but a few of them are there to help with his sexual desires. These desires trap him in a “catholic marriage” where more art stems from. He is stuck with these desires just like he is stuck with the art that he creates since they are a part of him and without them, he is not Stephen. He begins to have more desires than ever before, mostly sexual, since his sense of purity for women is there. When he sees certain women he cannot help but have certain thoughts and desires about them. It is in his nature to think these ideas about them. These desires are always around him, “The aspiring poet knows that he may not look but not touch, admire but not speak. He glorifies the wading girl as angelic muse but never actually approaches her in the teeming ocean waters”(Henke 330). These ideas that Stephen thinks of, which include sexual feelings to the women that he creates, are not acceptable in society. His art is unacceptable to his father. The unpurification of these ideas are not what Stephen wants to do. He wants to avoid being the one to take the purity of these women or anybody else. He has no problem having sexual thoughts of women who have already lost their purity but is afraid of taking purity from those who still have it. “…Stephen is determined to control the world of physiological process by freezing life in the sacrament of art. His ‘spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus’”(Henke 330). He wants everything to be as pure as they can be and as untouched as they can be which is influenced by his ideas and beliefs in the church. People should remain in state of purity and not change. Those people who are not pure are still easier for him to deal with since he will not be afraid of taking away their purity. He is not afraid of losing his purity because he is no longer pure. He already lost his when he went out with the prostitute. “His response to the girl is exclusively specular, as he takes refuge in a masculine, visual, sexual economy and sublimates tactile and olfactory drives that would move him toward sensuous contact”(Henke 330). He does not approach but instead admires from afar. He admires the beauty that he finds when he looks in his desires and art because of their purity. He cannot take the purity away from his art. It is something that he has created to always be the way it was made to be.

Perfection is something that does not exist but Stephen consistently searches for it in the people around him and in art. In the people that he socializes with, he cannot find this perfection that he searches for so he creates women who are perfect to him. He sees his mother as perfect, though he did not create her of course. The search for perfection drives him away from everything but art because he can make art into anything he wants whenever he wants. It is something that he has control over unlike the people around him which he can do nothing about but helplessly look at. Joyce makes Stephen search for this perfection so he can find art which ends up Stephen without the companionship of anyone. Stephen’s solitude is the only way he can reach art so he decides that being alone, away from any other distraction, is the best idea for him. He knows art is his calling so he does what he has to do in order to reach the goal that he sees in front of himself. By reaching his art not only is he reaching what he would love to do but he is also reaching perfection. Perfection may not exist but he can create anything and say to himself that it is perfect because his ideas are what he wants them to be.

Art is everything to Stephen; therefore nothing else to him is important. This is why he enters a state where he is alone and is accompanied by nobody, only art. He sees politics, religion, and society as setbacks from his art. Joyce shows how these ideas that are influential in a person’s life can lead anybody into any path that they want to follow. It all matters now how the information is seen as. Stephen’s ideas created love for art. Stephen Dedalus attempts to “fly” away from these setbacks in order to take advantage of art and what it can bring to him. He needs to focus on art and only that so nothing else can get in his way of creating figures in his life in which he sees as perfection.

Joyce uses Stephen Dedalus’ last name in order to show his “flying” from the setbacks that he faces all around him. Dedalus relates to the story about “Daedalus and Icarus.” In this Greek mythology, Daedalus and his son Icarus are trapped on an island and cannot escape off of it. Daedalus creates wings and plans on using them to fly off the island. Icarus decides to try it himself and ends up falling to his death. This defiance of the God’s ends up in Daedalus’ son’s death. In relation to Stephen, he uses his “wings” to “fly” from everything he believes is causing him trouble. As he is retreating from all these troubles, he finds him self alone. This is in sense the death of society around him including his family and friends. Though Daedalus may have wanted to get revenge for the loss of his son, Stephen is glad to leave everybody and everything else behind in order to be alone with art. This is the only way he can finally do what he was born to do.

With people around him and with their ideas as a distraction, art cannot be “born” in his mind. Art is his children. By making art Stephen’s children, Joyce shows his inability to be with a woman, not because of his sexual preference, but because of his need of purity around him at all times. Since his sexuality cannot take the purity of anybody else, his sexuality is expressed through his art which in sense create them as his children. His mind is full of ideas that end up as his art and beauty. It could be said that his mind is impregnated with all these ideas waiting to be born. He does not need anyone to create these ideas just like how the Virgin Mary had a baby. Art is placed there by the Holy Spirit which has been a topic he has been around for almost all of his life because of his family and society. Though the Virgin Mary was the symbol of purity in the bible and religion, Stephen can still be seen in this light even though he is not exactly pure like the Virgin Mary was when she had Jesus. Stephen, himself, may not be pure to be exact but the ideas that he brings fourth and creates with art are. His ideas are far from being corrupt and evil. He is even afraid to take the purity of women that he meets including the ones that he creates in his mind. Joyce puts Stephen in this light to show that Stephen has purity in his heart even though his purity was lost when he was with the prostitute or even before that when he began having thoughts about women that he thought he should not have. Joyce not only shows that Stephen has purity in mind, but he also shows that he is unsure of anything that is not pure. Since people in society may not be pure, his art is. This is the only object that he can tell is pure because he is the one who created to be that way. He is the one who thought it up himself so it would be like that forever. Stephen cannot and will not take away the purity from the ideas and art that he has created.

James Joyce’s constant ideas of Parnell and politics are mentioned to show the influence that politics has on Stephen. In Ireland, politics and church both had very distinct ideas that opposed one another. Society was split between both. People are not being split between the two. They pick one or the other and feel very strongly about it like Mr. Dedalus with his politics and Dante with her religion. Both were one sided people. Stephen took both ideas which became the basis for his ideas on perfection and purity. From this, art became his passion which he follows when he realizes it is what he was born to do. Art is his way of having purity and having perfection in his life.