A Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man Analysis

Truly successful author’s have the ability to convey their point without actually saying it to portray a certain situation by describing it in various ways. In the excerpt of the novel “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” James Joyce does just this. Through his use of stylistic elements such as selection of diction, imagery, and syntax, Joyce explains the development of the protagonist’s stream of consciousness. In the beginning of the second section of the passage, Joyce selects the most simple and basic diction in order to portray the starting stages of the protagonist’s development. He draws attention to a story being told to a child by stating, “ He was baby tuckoo” essentially describing the very simplistic language used (Joyce 1). In addition, he speaks about very
Joyce starts with “Uncle Charles and Dante clapped” and later uses the same structure to say, “The Vances lived in number seven” These sentences are very simple and show that the protagonist does not have a very large vocabulary and states exactly what happens with no elaboration. Also, there are no concrete ideas, but instead can be seen as a scattered stream of consciousness by the very short sentences because thoughts that are not complex are usually very short with no elaboration. As the protagonist further develops, there is a little more complexity seen in the way that he thinks. There are more medium length sentences that presents the developing character. Joyce describes, “ he opened the geography to study the lesson: but he could not learn the names of places in America” (2). This sentence is still so simple but has a longer length and also elaborates on the idea which shows the protagonist is now developing and complexifying his stream of