The Relationship between Stephen Dedalus and Mythical Daedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of the best-known works of James Joyce. It is a bildungsroman, which, according to Britannica, is a "class of novel that deals with the maturation process, with how and why the protagonist develops as he does, both morally and psychologically", published in the early 20th century. Aside from being a bildungsroman, it also has an autobiographical side to it. Moreover, it reflects the political and social environment of Ireland, which is where James Joyce is from. Joyce uses these environments, which were part of his maturation as well, to develop the personality, ideas, and artistic side of the main character of the novel, Stephen Dedalus. Throughout the novel, Stephen thinks and makes observations about the incidents that arise from these social and political issues, along with his family matters, and uses them in one way or another to shape his identity. As a young artist, Stephen mostly tends to think differently from the people around him in these cases; thus, in the end, he fully detaches himself from the others by leaving the country. Many people who study this novel see Stephen’s behavior towards everything around him and his departure at the end as an allusion to the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. Although some refer to Stephen’s character as a reflection of Icarus, a free spirit and a rebellious son who did not listen to his father’s warning and fell to his death because of his passion for flying higher and higher, many others take him as a representative of the artisan Daedalus who made the wings to escape from the labyrinth with his talent for art, escape from all the restrictions such as nation, religion, and family, and his name, Dedalus.

Firstly, Stephen is "an artist creating an artist" (LaLuna) during his maturation process in the novel. From the beginning to the end, Stephen’s interest in words, his intellect, and his questions about his own life and the lives around him show his difference from the people around him. He has a passion for art and literature, as one can understand from many scenes in the book where he talks about literary and aesthetic ideas of his and how seriously he takes them, even though the people with whom he talks do not seem as interested as he is. In addition to this, he writes poems of his own and creates art. He has all the affection and dedication one needs to thrive as an artist, along with his talent, just like Daedalus, who was the greatest artisan of all in Greek mythology. Daedalus was surely devoted to his art with affection as well because what makes a good artist is not only their talent but also their love for what they do. Stephen, apart from his talent, differs from everyone around him with his questions, observations, and ideas.

This spirit of quarrelsome comradeship which he had observed lately in his rival had not seduced Stephen from his habits of quiet obedience. He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood. The question of honor here raised was, like all such questions, trivial to him. While his mind had been pursuing its intangible phantoms and turning in irresolution from such pursuit he had heard about him the constant voices of his father and his masters, urging him to be a gentleman above all things and urging him to be a good catholic above all things. These voices had now come to be hollow-sounding in his ears. When the gymnasium had been opened he had heard another voice urging him to be strong and manly and healthy and when the movement towards national revival had begun to be felt in the college yet another voice had bidden him to be true to his country and help to raise her language and tradition. In the profane world, as he foresaw, a worldly voice would bid him raise his father’s fallen state by his labors and, meanwhile, the voice of his school comrades urged him to be a decent fellow, to shield others from blame or to beg them off and to do his best to get free days for the school. (Joyce 101)

In the quote above, Stephen questions every doctrine that is served to him, and he is expected to adapt. He questions his father’s, nation's, and religion’s expectations of him. Even though at one point he tries to adapt, he rejects all the precepts for his passions, yet he is stuck in the middle of these concepts, even though he does not agree with them. This situation creates Stephen’s labyrinth.

While Daedalus’ labyrinth is his creation, it still represents the authority of being procured by King Minos, just as Stephen’s labyrinth was a tool in the process of shaping his personality. Stephen’s labyrinth is made of everything in his life that creates pressure on him and restricts his writing ability. His family’s poverty causes them to move their house often and, at one point, prevented Stephen from going to college. As he states in the quote above, everyone around him expects him to save his family from its fallen state, and this represses him. His nation endeavors to revive its language, culture, and independence from Britain, and thus expects every Irish person to support this intention and follow its methods, such as learning and teaching Gaelic, to revive it and get rid of English. Stephen, however, does not agree with this. He thinks reviving old culture and language will not help the Irish find their identity. According to Dr. Jacqueline Belanger’s Introduction to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man "In recasting questions of Ireland’s search for national identity in terms of Stephen’s painful road to maturity, Joyce rejects definitions of Irishness that are formulated by looking to the past, and instead embraces an Irish identity based on the realities of contemporary Ireland and its relation to Britain and the rest of Europe". As a result, Stephen's contradictory ideas about his country's freedom occupy his mind and keep him from creating art. The most important thing that prevents Stephen from making art is the conflict between the religious precepts he accepted to follow and his desires. When he discovers his sexuality, he starts to detach from the church more and more, but when, in chapter 3, the preacher tells the students about sin, hell, and heaven, he devotes himself to religion. "Thus, Stephen forces himself through a tangle of sex and religion before he discovers his true vocation, for sex and religion are the twin red herrings which distract Stephen from his true calling, that of becoming an artist" (Grant 414). Stephen states how he wants to sever himself from all the restrictions in the following quote while talking to Davin: "The soul is born […] first in those moments I told you of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me about nationality, language, and religion. I shall try to fly by those nets" (Joyce 252). Stephen wants to leave everything that binds him behind and be free from all kinds of authority that prevent him from writing, just as Daedalus wants to leave the labyrinth he made because of the king’s orders, which takes away his freedom and holds him back.

One of the most obvious aspects that indicates Stephen reflects Daedalus is his surname, "Dedalus." "Dedalus" is not a usual Irish name. Thus, the strangeness of the name is highlighted by many people in many situations in the book. For example, when Stephen meets Nasty Roche (Joyce 5), or when he meets Athy in the infirmary (26), he becomes aware of his name throughout the novel, especially when he thinks about art. In the end, he embraces his name as his heredity and as a part of his identity as an artist when he says, "Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead" (317). So, by emphasizing his surname, Joyce implies that Stephen has a connection with Daedalus, the great artisan of the Greek myths.

To sum up, apart from Stephen’s unusual surname, which openly serves as an implication of the similarity between him and Daedalus, his talent and devotion to art, his critical thinking, and his escape from the labyrinth of religion, nation, and family, which restricts him from making his art, are other aspects Joyce uses to present Stephen as a representation of Daedalus to the reader in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.