A Portrait Of Stephen Dedalus As A Young Man

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replies. "It seems now I failed." The force that eventually unites these contradictory Stephens is his overwhelming desire to become an artist, to create. At the novel's opening we see him as an infant artist who sings "his song." Eventually we'll see him expand that song into poetry and theories of art.
At the book's end he has made art his religion, and he abandons family, Catholicism, and country to worship it. The name Joyce gave his hero underscores this aspect of his character. His first name comes from St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr; many readers have seen Stephen as a martyr to his art. His last name comes from the great inventor of Greek myth, Daedalus, whose mazes and waxen wings are the kind of splendid artistic creations Stephen hopes to equal in his writing. Just as Stephen is a contradictory figure, we may have contradictory feelings about him. We can believe that he is a brilliant artist who must flee dull, uncultured Dublin at any cost. We can admire his ...

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