In the novel “The portrait of the artist as a young man” Joyce beautifully describes the character of the protagonist Stephen. As he grows old he experiences a change in his thinking as well as a development of character. He also undergoes changes in his linguistic skills and the way he perceives language.
The beginning
Stephen is still naïve about language and resorts to his own rationality to make sense of the linguistic complexities around him. A number of instances are found when he thinks of novel meaning of words or tries to understand the origin of the word. Stephen's fascination with the word “suck” where he tries to come to an understanding of the relationship between a word's sound and its meaning is one such instance. Language, to him, possesses a certain quality of foreignness or mystery. Stephen’s appropriation of the religious phrases “Tower of Ivory” and “House of Gold” as phrases to represent the little girl Eileen give us an indication of how his mind is flexible about language. Stephen has strong emotional reactions to the aesthetic qualities of language, and though he can’t explain it, this "beautiful and sad" line acts powerfully upon him. The repetition of "beautiful and sad," "sad and beautiful" shows us that he just doesn’t have the vocabulary to express his complex response to this moment. As he develops older his parents start moving a lot which usually leaves him which ample solitude. He shows literary interests early in his life. It is The Count of Monte Cristo, a work of literature, rather than the people around him that interests Stephen most. Also like most children, he often imagines various parts of Marseilles in his real life and frequently thinks about Mercedes, the female protagonist of the story. Perhaps inspired by his reading, he also tries to write a poem but could not come up with something good. This indicates his own world where he believed that poem writing will be as easy as taking a piece of paper and writing down the poem. Stephen is one of the best in Essay Writing in his class. He sees literature as art and not some means to support some cause or to be used for the motives of politics or religion. He argues for Byron being the best poet of all times although he is known to be a heretic. He is more a protestant in spite of his family being catholic. The ‘Foetus’ incident shows how he is able to reconstruct an entire scene in his mind with the help of a single word
His Teenage self
He starts going to the red light area. I would like to highlight the sapping of Stephen’s linguistic powers – when he "surrenders himself" to the prostitute, her kiss effectively blots out his mind, and the best communication we can hope for is "vague speech. His artistic side is clearly developing as he tries to consider more and more the aesthetic aspect of different things. But as he starts feeling guilty over his acts and confesses to the priest, he starts reading way too much religious scriptures out of fear of going to hell. His sense of literature which is clearly not religious is subdued and he involves himself with the study of religious scriptures. But the fact that he is free spirited and not constrained by religion is shown later when he refuses the offer of priesthood. Stephen returns to his appreciation of the physical world after he decides not to become a priest. As a result, Joyce rewards us with this rich explanation of why Stephen loves language so much. An interesting biographical note – Joyce himself was extremely shortsighted (he eventually went almost completely blind), so this is a personal explanation of the author’s love of language.
The Final Part
The point where he hears the ivy whining poem, he is irritated by it. You know when you look at a word for so long that it ceases to have any meaning? That’s what I thought of when I read this passage. Language, which is so important to Stephen, starts to frustrate him when it loses significance. His classmates already consider him an artist. His understanding of the aesthetic world far exceeds that of his classmates. He is disturbed by the fact that English for him is an acquired language and he will never be able to express freely as Englishmen. But still, he chooses not to learn Gaelic. He considers literature to be the highest and most spiritual of art. Finally writes his first poem!
Stephen’s fixation on language is what alerts us to his artistic inclinations from the very beginning of the novel. Both Joyce and his protagonist demonstrate a deep fascination with the purely aesthetic elements of language. In fact the novel itself comes as an account of how Stephen developed from a kid to a teenager with highly developed sense of aesthetics and linguistics and how in the end he continues on his road to become an artist.
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