Symbolism in Portrait of the Artist

If we were to concern ourselves strictly with plot, we might well say of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that there is no there. Not a great deal actually happens in this essentially autobiographical tale of Stephen Dedalus, and the narrative follows no clear single trajectory of cause and effect. Rather, in one of the first important uses of stream of consciousness, Joyce tells us in this short novel about Stephen's growing self-awareness as a person and as an artist, a growing self-awareness that will cause him by the end of the book to cast off the nationalism, the Catholicism and the sense of clannishness that defines other members of his father and to set off to Paris to become a writer. Joyce's use of symbolism is far more important in conveying what he has to say about...
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