The Development of Consciousness in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
In James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a young Irish man, Stephen Dedalus struggles to find himself. Joyce shows Stephen's development of consciousness through his religious and artistic journey from childhood to adulthood.
As a young boy Stephen's perception of the world is quite different than that of the man's he is to become later on in his life. His early impressions of the world seen from a juvenile perspective reflect that of a child taking in all of the physical sensations of his surroundings. Though childlike as they are, his observations show that, even at such a young age Stephen is extremely aware of the world around him. .
The development of Stephen's consciousness is further illustrated as a teenager struggling with complex emotional desires. While attending the Jesuit school Clongowes Wood College, as his family is no longer able to afford to send him to Belvedere, Stephen is overcome by longing. While out wandering the streets one night Stephen is seduced by a Dublin prostitute and has his first sexual experience . Finally giving in to his physical desires brings mixed emotions for Stephen, and feelings of guilt and shame soon overtake him, "From the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk" (113). As he turns away from his family and his Church more and more, Stephen's immersion in this world of prostitutes and the like quickly overtakes his identity as a person. A turning point for Stephen occurs as he is listening to a stirring sermon by Father Arnall about hell.