Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man traces the growth and development of Stephen Dedalus from infancy to young manhood in Ireland at the end of the nineteenth century, and his gradual decision to cast off all his social, national, and religious constraints and live a life devoted to artistic pursuits.
             A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of the earliest examples in English literature of a novel that makes extensive use of stream of consciousness, which is a narrative technique through which the author attempts to represent the fluid and eruptive nature of human thought. The narrative is anchored in the interior life of a character rather than from the perspective of an objective third-person narrator. Thus Joyce's novel does not begin:" Stephen Dedalus was born in February 1882 in Rathgar, Dublin, the eldest son of Simon Dedalus...". Nor does it proceed by clear and direct explanation of crucial stages in Stephen's story. There is no section beginning," When Stephen was six his parents decided to send him as a boarder to Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare...". Instead of such direct statements, the first section begins with the voice of Stephen's father telling a bedtime story and the second section begins with the description of a school playground swarming with boys. Eventhough, Joyce is careful to mark changes of scene clearly, the reader has to keep his wits about him in order to follow the transitions that occur when Joyce moves from presenting the outer scene to presenting what is going on in Stephen's mind. For instance, when Stephen is still wondering whether he really dare take his complaint against Father Dolan to the rector when he is already approaching the rector's door. "He was walking down along the matting and he saw the door before him. It was impossible: he could not." The first sentence is direct narration; the second is Stephen's thoughts. The absence of a narrator to mediate the novel le...