A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
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In the opening chapters of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce couples the development of Stephen Dedalus as a human being with the development of his skills at language. The character is always surrounded by and fascinated by language and by the act of telling a story, and this is mirrored in the structure of the novel and in the way the language is structured as well. Stephen's interest in language is created as he interacts with the world around him and as he is motivated to explain that world to himself first and then to others. The novel recreates the development of a writer, one who works with words, communicates with language, but also one who understands the world and himself through his fascination with language. In the early chapters, Stephen's sense of language and storytelling remains in its early stages and does not develop to full artistic communication. In order to understand Stephen's fascination with language and how it is reflected in the novel, it is important to know the entirety of the story and thus to see how the early chapters fit into an overall development of character. The novel as a whole is clearly described by the title, which tells us that Stephen Dedalus will become an artist and that this story is about his early life as he was formed into the incipient artist. His artistry will be with words, and thus it is not surprising that his development as an artist should include a fascination with the structures and possibilit
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flects the age level and understanding of the boy. There is an abrupt shift from the memory language of the very young Stephen to longer paragraphs and more complex sentence structure as Stephen reaches school age. The sentences are still relatively short, each expressing a simple, single idea. Stephen reacts to language as he interacts with his school chums. Rody Kickham says, "He'd give you a toe in the rump for yourself," and the reaction is, "That was not a nice expression" (9). The boy encounters language again in the from of a poem which is intended to teach spelling but which also shows a love for language and puns:
Wolsey died in Leicester Abbey
Where the abbots buried him.
Canker is a disease of plants,
Cancer one of animals (10).
Throughout these opening sequences, Stephen appears more as observer than participant, and as an observer he is also a listener. He sees Rody's terminology as "not a nice expression" (9). He also notes Rody's use of the word "suck" (11). He is fascinated by the words "cold" and "hot" on the water taps and by the meninges of the words (11-12). He is also taken with the words Fleming writes in his book:
Stephen Dedalus is my name,
Ireland is my nation.
Clongowes is my dwell
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Stephen Dedalus, C-- Stephen's, Apologise Pull, Leicester Abbey, English French, Kickham He'd, James Joyce, stephen dedalus, York Penguin, fascination language, language stories, , Portrait Artist, nice expression 9, expression 9, moocow coming, 16 stephen, error language, language reflected, coming road, pull eyes, moocow coming road,
Approximate Word count = 1521
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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