In a person's life, the beginning years help greatly to form who that person will become in his or her future. These years can be considered the building blocks of one's journey to find who he will be come for the rest of his life. The theme of A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man is the struggle and success of finding one's true person. The novel tells multiple segments of the main character, Stephen's life. By doing so, somewhat of a time line is created in which both impacting moments and turning points of Stephen's life are presented. The author used this time line to show very intimate points of the main character's thoughts and actions, which often were conflicts that many people are presented with at some point in his or her life. These conflicts included acceptance with peers, sexual relations, religion, and family pressure. For the majority of the novel, Stephen's obsessive personality caused him to take a strong side to each of these issues, however, as he matured through the novel, conflicts became more and more passive, and he began to reason and calmly work through conflicts, rather than going to extremes.
One technique that James Joyce used to achieve this dynamic character is the third person limited point of view. By presenting scenes as Stephen saw them, and writing in the style of Stephen's maturity at the time, the author created an environment in which Stephen's entire being is presented, causing a full exposure of who he was in that particular moment. This depth of character showed Stephen's focuses, worries, preception of surroundings, and resolutions, which shows not only this character's depth of personality, but the tendency of human internal conflict throughout life. The majority of conflicts presented in the novel were man vs. self over issues previously mentioned. Through the writing style of this novel, James Joyce invites the reader to take part in thoughts that typically, one struggles with on his or her own.
The majority of this novel is written in third person limited, however, part five provides Stephen with a voice, in form of his journal entries. On the 26 of April (page 275), Stephen speaks of his mother's hope that he learn in his life "what the heart is and what it feels." This statement is followed by, "So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race." This passage wraps up the novel with Stephen showing a true change in character from where the novel began. In the beginning, Stephen was an cautuous boy who primarily focused on acceptance, then he began to obsess over religion and his fate. His obsessive personality left no room for chance, no room for mistake. Here, on the other hand, Stephen shows a welcoming of life, admitting that he must continue to move forward to find what comes next. The uplifting tone of the passage suggests that he embraces his future, whereas in the beginning, he feared for the worst in every situation. This embracing provides a closure of the old Stephen, and a welcoming of the future.
Personally, I am torn on my feelings toward A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I disliked this novel for several reasons. First of all, I found that the layout could be a bit confusing at times. I would have been able to follow it much easier had each different scene been its own chapter, because they seemed to jump around quite a bit which took away from the impact of some moments in Stephen's life. Also, I feel that if James Joyce had written the entire novel in first person, Stephen's thoughts would have been much clearer to understand throughout. However, I found the characterization of Stephen very interesting due to his deep thoughts and reactions toward situations. Personally, I found that some of his struggles were easy to relate to, such as the need for peer acceptance, which helped me to be able to place myself deep into the novel in Stephen's shoes, but it is the type of novel that you can't read once and understand every bit of it. Overall, I think that this novel is one that can be considered a great work, and I plan on reading it a time or two more to be able to get everything out of it.
