Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

1. Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man • Chapter 4

2. Impact of Religion on The Prospective Artist • Stephen has sincerely repented • Conducts spiritual rituals and acts of self -denial (106) • Says daily rosaries, prays that the seven virtues be bestowed upon him each day of the week • -Read books of devotion • -"...he saw the whole world forming one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love." (107) • -Caused deliberate pain to his senses as a means of reverence to God • Director of studies at belvedere notices and suggests priesthood • Stephen has another epiphany as he realizes his desire to write with the same beauty as the woman in the water

3. Epiphany and Decision (122-124) • Chooses art over religion due to confining and rigorous demands of religion • - "The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently in a instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard: and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen, still I fallen but about to fall" (116). • - Views the world as an artist through imagery ( 119, last paragraph ) • Witnesses a young girl wading in waters of Dublin bay and she has an aesthetic, not an erotic, impact on him • -"He was alone. He was unneeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life...A girl stood before him in midstream:alone and still, gazing out to the sea"(122-123). • -He sees her as an angel, a sign to become the artist • - "Her eyes had called on him and his soul had leaped to the call"(123).

4. Chapter 5: Decision to Leave • Tone shifts from exultation in chapter 4 to depressed reality of the financial struggle of the Dedalus family • Dad criticizes him and mom begs him to go back to church= Stephen's further alienation from family • Discussion with the dean about being an artist (134) • -" What is that beauty which the artist struggles to express from lumps of earth- Stephen said coldly...and to distinguish between the beautiful and the sublime- the dean added- to distinguish between moral beauty and material beauty" (137) • Stephen then breaks from each facet of his forming identity as stated at the beginning: Irish nationalism, the Catholic Church and the family.

5. His patriotism ends as he explains to his friend Davin that he will not join the Irish nationalist movement due to the hypocrisy and betrayal within it(146-148) • Novel moves to include Stephen's pedantic and self-centered explanation of aesthetics and his unsympathetic view of his friend's hangover • What is beauty?- " To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and color which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand- that is art.- "(150)

6. He tells Cranly that he would not make his Easter duties: illuminates his break from Catholic church • - Stephen neither believes nor disbelieved in the Eucharist and failed at loving God (175-176) • -"Look here, Cranly- I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholy as I can...(181) • Narrative form shifts at end to diary entries • -Summary of his views on art and Ireland • -His decision to leave Ireland and move to Paris to encounter the reality of experience • Ends with an entry about his father, an artificer, and asking him to "stand him in good stead" - asking for his dad's pride