Flight Motif
From the opening pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the reader is introduced to the main character Stephen Dedalus, the flight motif is introduced, and will be carried on throughout the novel. Stephen’s last name comes from the Dedalus Myth in Greek mythology. Dedalus is thrown in prison because King Minos is convinced he has helped the Athenians escape, so Dedalus builds a pair of wings out of feathers and wax in order to escape. Stephen is imprisoned by his guilt and by others who try to make him conform to what they want. For example, Stephen’s father told him to make friends with the right people, like he did, but Mr. Dedalus was not always the upstanding citizen that he appears to be. Stephen is imprisoned by his homeland because it is not accepting of his plans for his future, just as Dedalus sees no escape by land, only flight.
As Stephen’s life continues, there are numerous instances where he is compared to a bird or birds are strategically included in a description; for example, “His throat ached with desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds,” (183-184). Flight is a symbol of Stephen finding his soul and freeing himself from the influence of others and Ireland. After Stephen realizes that his passion lies in writing, the flight motif becomes even more evident because at this point, Stephen’s relationship with his family is at its weakest, and he is realizing that the politics in Ireland are very constraining. Stephen is not living in the Ireland that he recalls from his childhood; people have to act like sheep such as the students taking notes in one of Stephen’s classes, leaving little space for thought and creativity.
Stephen needs space to contemplate his thoughts, like the birds have freedom to fly throughout the skies. His mind and soul needs to escape the heavily fortified prison cell created by guilt and constraints; symbolized by the birds and flight into the vastness of the sky, where there would seemingly be room for everything.
Quote
“Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? ... You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the Earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad…And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain: and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended,” (142-143).
This passage is an example of Joyce’s ability to create descriptions. He takes the word eternity, which already creates thoughts of something never ending, and creates images upon images of something never-ending, something completely unfathomable. This technique is called hyperbole, exaggeration to illustrate a point. Joyce also uses repetition of the concept of immeasurable things; the atoms and drops of water are all things that are seemingly immeasurable. The exclamation marks emphasizing the emotion being put into this speech really create a sense of emotion; one can sense the dramatic feel of this speech. The rhetorical question also does a good job of setting up the reader for the description to follow because it causes the reader to question the understanding that they have of eternity, making them more vulnerable to the explanations to come.
Opinion
From the opening pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when the reader is introduced to the main character Stephen Dedalus, the flight motif is introduced, and will be carried on throughout the novel. Stephen’s last name comes from the Dedalus Myth in Greek mythology. Dedalus is thrown in prison because King Minos is convinced he has helped the Athenians escape, so Dedalus builds a pair of wings out of feathers and wax in order to escape. Stephen is imprisoned by his guilt and by others who try to make him conform to what they want. For example, Stephen’s father told him to make friends with the right people, like he did, but Mr. Dedalus was not always the upstanding citizen that he appears to be. Stephen is imprisoned by his homeland because it is not accepting of his plans for his future, just as Dedalus sees no escape by land, only flight.
As Stephen’s life continues, there are numerous instances where he is compared to a bird or birds are strategically included in a description; for example, “His throat ached with desire to cry aloud, the cry of a hawk or eagle on high, to cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds,” (183-184). Flight is a symbol of Stephen finding his soul and freeing himself from the influence of others and Ireland. After Stephen realizes that his passion lies in writing, the flight motif becomes even more evident because at this point, Stephen’s relationship with his family is at its weakest, and he is realizing that the politics in Ireland are very constraining. Stephen is not living in the Ireland that he recalls from his childhood; people have to act like sheep such as the students taking notes in one of Stephen’s classes, leaving little space for thought and creativity.
Stephen needs space to contemplate his thoughts, like the birds have freedom to fly throughout the skies. His mind and soul needs to escape the heavily fortified prison cell created by guilt and constraints; symbolized by the birds and flight into the vastness of the sky, where there would seemingly be room for everything.
Quote
“Last and crowning torture of all the tortures of that awful place is the eternity of hell. Eternity! O, dread and dire word. Eternity! What mind of man can understand it? ... You have often seen the sand on the seashore. How fine are its tiny grains! And how many of those tiny little grains go to make up the small handful which a child grasps in its play. Now imagine a mountain of that sand, a million miles high, reaching from the Earth to the farthest heavens, and a million miles broad…And if that mountain rose again after it had been all carried away and if the bird came again and carried it all away again grain by grain: and if it so rose and sank as many times as there are stars in the sky, atoms in the air, drops of water in the sea, leaves on the trees, feathers upon birds, scales upon fish, hairs upon animals, at the end of all those innumerable risings and sinkings of that immeasurably vast mountain not one single instant of eternity could be said to have ended,” (142-143).
This passage is an example of Joyce’s ability to create descriptions. He takes the word eternity, which already creates thoughts of something never ending, and creates images upon images of something never-ending, something completely unfathomable. This technique is called hyperbole, exaggeration to illustrate a point. Joyce also uses repetition of the concept of immeasurable things; the atoms and drops of water are all things that are seemingly immeasurable. The exclamation marks emphasizing the emotion being put into this speech really create a sense of emotion; one can sense the dramatic feel of this speech. The rhetorical question also does a good job of setting up the reader for the description to follow because it causes the reader to question the understanding that they have of eternity, making them more vulnerable to the explanations to come.
Opinion
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was very enjoyable because of Joyce’s writing style and the difficulty of reading it. Admittedly, through the first part of the novel, I did not enjoy reading it because I felt it was boring, lacking any true plot that creates captures you as a reader. As the novel progresses, and the writing becomes more detailed and sophisticated, the novel became exponentially more enjoyable mainly because Joyce’s ability to create a picture and trigger all the senses through his descriptions was captivating such as in the descriptions of Hell. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was a challenging novel because of Joyce’s ability as a writer; there were several instances where a passage could be read and all of the important details would not be noticed the first time, but that is not bad thing. I would rather be challenged by what I am reading versus bored because the material is too easy.
1 comment:
I feel that flight was the most apparant and prevalent motif. You provided solid insight and useful background into the myth for someone who does not know of it.
I am also glad that you appreciated the difficulty of the book. I feel the same way. Some people are turned off by a challenge, but I find it to be motivation to try harder.
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