He Saw the Dark

“By thinking of things you could understand them” (43).

Points for Reflection

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Chp. 1

1. what impact does the omission of quotation marks and substitution of dashes before spoken dialogue have on the staging and tempo of characters’ conversations?
2. why might Joyce repeat the same word twice in a row when describing Stephen’s thoughts?
3. do Stephen’s parents and their friends help Stephen develop and solidify his religious beliefs, or do their contributions complicate issues of faith for Stephen?
4. why does Mrs. Riordan (Dante) so vehemently oppose Mr. Casey’s position on Charles S. Parnell?
5. do the Jesuit priests who teach at Clongowes model Christian virtues for their students?
6. which more powerfully undergird Stephen’s religious faith, fear or excitement?
7. do Dante’s critiques of Mr. Casey unsettle Stephen’s high estimation of the activist and former political prisoner?
8. does Dante (Mrs. Riordan) come across as an intelligent, insightful woman?
9. is Stephen’s affection for his mother disrupted, or strengthened, by his time away from her at Clongowes boarding school?
10. Irish fathers are infamous in literary history for being absent drunks.  Is Stephen’s father a kind and generous, present parent?
11. does our male characters allow themselves to express emotion openly?
12. why does Stephen begin to second-guess the instinctive kissing of his mother?
13. does Stephen’s moral framework allow him to make quick sense of other students’ moral infractions?
14. can priests, men of God, do wrong in Stephen’s eyes?
15. Charles Stewart Parnell, an Irish nationalist who headed up the Home Rule League (1880-82) and then the Irish Parliamentary Party (1882-91), had an extended affair with Kitty O’Shea.  (Her husband had separated from without divorcing her because Captain O’Shea wanted access to the inheritance she was due to eventually receive.)  Why does Parnell’s public ignominy, following the public revelation of the affair, fracture the Dedalus family’s friend group?  Is the reader led to sympathize with one side of the issue?
16. do Stephen’s home and educational environments both aid him in honing his sensuous attention sounds, images, smells, and touch?
17. does Stephen’s imagination appear particularly fertile for the mind of a six-year-old?
18. which proves a better predictor of Stephen’s developing imaginative faculties?  His academic performance across a variety of subjects, or his attention to aesthetics?
19. upon which of Stephen’s senses does he rely most heavily, and which the least?
20. which physical sensations comfort Stephen most, and which unsettle him?
21. how dependent is Stephen on his spectacles?
22. do Stephen’s vision difficulties stymie or feed his imagination?
23. how many of the sounds that delight Stephen have a musical quality to them?
24. under what circumstances do young Stephen’s associative powers most commonly generate similes and analogies?
25. Joyce did not gloss/define the words “scut” and “smugging” (42), though many readers have conjured likely possibilities, particularly for the latter.  Does not knowing precisely what Joyce intended to denote weaken or strengthen the narrative effect of Stephen’s own ignorance (42)?
26. do others’ names matter to Stephen as much as his own surname?
27. would you characterize young Stephen’s relationship with Eileen as friendly, romantic, or something else?
28. does the woman standing outside a cottage in Stephen’s mind’s eye (18) function as a maternal figure?
29. does Stephen find supportive friends at Clongowes, the boarding school housed in an old castle?
30. does young Stephen show admirable strength of character under pressure?

Landscape with Trees and Distant Buildings (date unknown)
Mary Swanzy

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu