From Tuckoo to Young Boy

            In the first few paragraphs of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce makes obvious the limits of Stephen’s consciousness, a technique used throughout Dubliners.  The difference is that in Dubliners, Joyce used the limits of consciousness to depict the paralysis in the people in Dublin, but in A Portrait, the technique is used to show the development of Stephen as he grows up.

            The story begins with Stephen as a baby and is probably suppose to be the first memory that Stephen can remember.  The story begins with the phrase, “Once upon a time” (Joyce 5), which is typically used to start fairy tales, but since the story is more of an autobiography than a fairy tale, it shows how young and undeveloped Stephen’s mind is since he only remembers this event as a story.  The rest of the section is filled with made up words such as “moocow “ and “tuckoo” (5) and also composed with very short sentences and small paragraphs that again show his inability to elaborate or analyze very deeply on what is happening around him.  Instead of analyzing his surroundings, he simply observes them such as when he notices, “When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold” (5). 

            The first paragraph of Stephen at the boarding school already shows how much Stephen has developed.  While playing rugby (or Gaelic football) with the boys in his school, he notices “He felt his body small and weak amid the throng of players” (6).  Stephen has gained a sense of self-awareness and feels discouraged while playing with his friends.  Later, Stephen notes how the students are broken into two houses and given the colors of either red or white based on the two sides of the English civil war.  While there is a political significance to these colors, Stephen does not seem to understand this and just simply thinks, “Those were beautiful colours to think of” (10).  Furthermore he notes how, “You could not have a green rose” (10), which probably represented Ireland, but Stephen does not seem to make the connection here even though he is Irish.  So while Stephen mentally develops between the two sections, he clearly displays he has a lot of maturing to go still.

            With the stream of consciousness so prevalent in Dubliners to display the people’s stagnation is there significance that Stephen breaks this trend so early in the book?  Also with the theory that Stephen represents Joyce, is Joyce suggesting that he knows how to beat the stagnation and possibly be a savior-like presence to Ireland?