Referencing Ovid’s Metamorphosis, the novel portrays Stephen Dedalus’ metamorphosis from a frightened confused child into a young man who is strong enough to face the unknown. There are five chapters in the novel and each chapter represents different stages of transformation in Stephen’s life. Every chapter includes the development of his body, mind, and his soul as an artist.
In Part I, as he is a growing child, his body changes besides his thoughts. We read how his mind is filled with ‘grown-up’ thoughts. He makes a list of his place in the universe.
Stephen Dedalus
Class of Elements
Clongowes Wood College
Sallins
County Kildare
Ireland
Europe
The World
The Universe (page 12)
As a child, he questions almost everything. He asks God’s place in this list and if there could be green roses. We perceive that through the novel as he grows he forgets these important thoughts. The more he grows the more his thoughts get smaller. He begins to accept what is given because even as a child he is limited by many institutions. After making the list we read his friend’s list:
Stephen Dedalus is my name.
Ireland is my nation.
Clongowes is my dwelling place
And heaven my expectation. (page 13)
This stanza shows how Stephen is limited with his name, with his nation, and with his religion. Throughout the novel, we read the journey while he tries to free himself from these limitations.
This chapter includes three other important scenes. First is displayed at Christmas where his father and Dante fight about Parnell. It is important because the fight and his father’s words about church will be processed in his subconscious and he will match betrayal with the church in his later life without noticing it. Moreover, it will make him realize that politics captures every day of Irelander families. The second is displayed on page 47, and we witness how he perceives words, how his imaginative mind works and so the growth of his soul as an artist.
‘’The word was beautiful: wine. It made you think of dark purple because the grapes were dark purple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples.’’
The last scene is displayed when he resists against the dean for the injustice that had been done to him. Even in the first chapter, he experiences important milestones which would be the sparks that fire up his confidence in the journey that he will take in the end.
Part II includes changes in Stephen’s life. Because of his father’s financial issues, he has to change his school and his house. We see him in different places and situations but his development continues in this chapter too.
‘’Tempora mutantur et nos mutanur in ilis(Circumstances change and we change with them)’’ (page 100)
Stephen continues to play with words on page 64. Even if he does not understand them he tries to memorize them so that he could understand the ‘real world’. His artistic soul continues to develop as he writes poems in Byronic style yet on page 88, it is clear that he has not freed himself from the body that holds his artistic soul. He hears some voices which will not stop until he hears his own voice but until then he will be pulled apart by politicians, prostitutes, and nationalists.
Through the end of the chapter, Stephen will discover his sexuality not because he has fallen in love or anything but only because of the lust that boyhood brought naturally.
‘’Nothing stirred within his soul but a cold and cruel and loveless lust. His childhood was dead or lost and with it his soul capable of simple joys, and he was drifting amid life like the barren shell of the moon.’’ (page 102)
In Part III, Stephen suffers from the sins he had done in the previous chapter. The effects of Father Arnall’s sermon reflected on both his body and soul. In the retreat he sees nightmares and his inner fight grows out of him. He imagines himself to be dead and to feel the infinite torture that his body and his soul would endure in the afterlife.
We do not read any sample from his artistic soul instead the soul is silenced with pain. The words that he used for writing poems, reading stories, and memorizing turned against him in his confession. He thinks that the only way to relieve his conscience is to confess. But he suffers in finding the courage to do that.
‘’Confess! He had to confess every sin. How could he utter in words to the priest what he had done? Must, must. Or how could he explain without dying of shame? Or how could he have done such things without shame? A madman, a loathsome madman! Confess! O he would indeed be free and sinless again! Perhaps the priest would know. O, dear God!’’ (page 151)
After he confesses he thinks that his soul became fair and holy once again. Yet, in the coming chapter, he will realize that his soul would not be happy if it did not include literature.
Part IV is a transition chapter. In the first half of the chapter, Stephen schedules himself on a religious discipline where he prays every day and thinks that God loves him. However, in the second half of the chapter, after receiving the proposal of being reverend, he reflects on himself and realizes that he could not separate himself from sins and temptations. One of his temptations was toward words and literature. On page 180, he plays with words again and while watching birds he experiences an epiphany where he realizes that he bears the same name as the great artificer of Ancient Greece, Daedalus.
Later when he is at the seaside he looks at a woman’s bare legs, not with a lusty look but with an aesthetic look. It is an important moment for Stephen in creating his artistic view.
‘’Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call.’’ (page 186)
Like any smoker who could not quit smoking right away, Stephen would not quit using a religious language and image either for a long time.
In Part V, the last chapter, we read a bold transformation in Stephen. He knows and reads ancient philosophers and he says to the dean that he will use their light to make something else for himself. While they were discussing how words should be used in aesthetics they realize that they do not use the same word for an object and this accident makes Stephen question whether his native tongue is Irısh or English. He has used English since the day he was born but his friends and families think Irısh should be revived because it is their native tongue.
Stephen came to realize that he was brought up in controversial ideals. He realizes that he did not build an identity for himself instead let it be built by his social constitutions such as social class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, and education. He understands that in order to free himself and be himself he should ‘fly by those nets’ (page 220).
As he constructs himself again this time by himself he defines the personality of an artist who is ‘like God of the creation’ (page 233) that creates a new cosmos when needed after destroying the old one. In the following pages the point of view changes into the first person. This transformation proves that Stephen found his own voice.
In conclusion, Stephen becomes a young man who defied the norms of authority such as state, church, and father and freed himself from the social, religious, and political institutions which silenced his artistic soul. He knew that Ireland freed herself from British Empire through literature and books that is why he, as an artist, accepted a mission that will destroy the stereotype of an Irısh and make him a symbol of his race. The novel does not tell us if he ever succeeded or not but we know that he has accomplished a lot when he became his own subject in his own story instead of accepting to be an object in someone else’s story.
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