Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Essay
... : Stephen’s Struggle to Find Himself in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins when the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is an infant. ... Stephen and his father have a close relationship when he is young, and his father is genuinely happy, a side of him we only see for a short time in the novel. ... The happiness that the family shared when Stephen was young foreshadows that there will be hardships to come, although at this point we do not know what. ... So, when young Stephen states that “he is going to marry Eileen Vance when he grows up,” (2), Dante gets extremely irate, and Stephen’s mother demands an apology. ... This scenario represents Stephen’s first real encounter with religion, as it is the first time it has an effect on his life, but since he is very young, Stephen does not fully understand why Dante and his mother were so angry. ... Stephen’s tendency to be a loner develops throughout the novel and eventually concludes with him leaving Ireland alone without his best friends from university to pursue his dream of being an artist.