Growing Up Metamorphoses

At the end of Section IV, Stephen experiences an epiphany that leaves him with a “new wild life singing in his veins” (149).  This seems to be a shift in thought from the previous life style that Stephen had previously been living, where he would constantly say Hail Marys and do everything in his power to not sin.  But the biggest part of this epiphany comes from his realization that he is no longer a boy and starts to accept the responsibilities of being a man.  He rhetorically asks himself, “Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds” (149).  An interesting part of this is that Stephen refers to his soul as a she, which might only be a simple artistic style to always call a soul a woman, or may be Stephen realizing the girlish actions of his past and wanting to take steps towards manhood.  This interpretation looks more accurate when he responds to his own question that the young boy was “Alone and young and willful and wild-hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air… and gayclad lightclad figures of children and girls and voices childish and girlish in the air” (150).  This shows how Stephen recognizes his weak former self and uses words such as “gayclad” and “girlish” to describe his experiences. 

This transformation moment takes on an actual form when he sees the girl in the ocean.  While before he seemed to distance himself from the narrative when encountering girls, he starts the encounter by saying how the girl “stood before him” (150), so it is clearly suppose to be Stephen in the scene. Also when Stephen tried to write the love letter before to E. C., he could not quite find the words to describe it, but now his thoughts are much more composed and even artistic in how he describes her thighs as “fuller and softhued as ivory, were barred almost to the hips where the white fringes of her drawers were like featherings of soft white down” (150).

Could this metamorphosis be the inspiration that gives Stephen the confidence he needs to finally become the great artist he is destined to be?