A major theme in the novel A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man is sinning. Stephen is very devout in his Catholicism and constantly struggles with his sins, whether real or imagined. A major example of this theme is his encounters with prostitutes and the aftermath of his actions when he torments himself for his sins. After his first encounter with a prostitute he fells a rush of regret and disgust with his sins, “A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess....He had sinned mortally not once but many times and he knew that, while he stood in danger of eternal damnation for the first sin alone, by every succeeding sin he multiplied his guilt and his punishment” (Joyce 110). This shows Stephen’s focus on the adverse affects of sinning rather than the growth he can achieve from it. It is not until later in the novel that he finally grows to accept that he can look at and desire females without being damned to hell for all eternity or being maimed. His exaggeration of his sins proves that he is different from the other young men around him because they saw no problem chasing after women. Through Stephen’s extreme guilt for sinning, however, Joyce is able to raise the question of how much devotion to religion and God is too much. Stephen undoubtedly passed over into an unhealthy obsession with sins that he could not avoid; what teenage boy can go through puberty without having a sexual thought about a girl. The sermon that Stephen then listens to at the church after his sins, that he feels is directly pointed at him and saying that he was going to hell. This is another example of how the theme of sinning allowed Joyce to make a statement about the adverse affects of religious extremism and how, even though Stephen may have remembered an exaggerated view of the sermon, it still affected him in a harmful way.
The passage on the bottom of page 229, “To finish what I was saying...called the enchantment of the heart,” is a key turning point in the novel because it is the point where Stephen can finally express his views on art and explain how he finds beauty in things. The purpose of the work was to demonstrate the maturation of an artist, and this is the place where he shows that he understands the world on a more meaningful level. In the passage he first says that to have a “the most satisfying relationship of the sensible” one must understand art on the deepest level. I think that the most satisfying relationship would be to be able create art and beauty and identify it in others. He then goes on to say that the three things that are needed for universal beauty are wholeness, harmony, and radiance. The most important part of this passage is not his identification of these ideas, but his ability to explain them in detail on the subsequent pages. He compares wholeness to a basket by saying that one judges the basket as a whole object separate of its environment and parts as one thing. He describes harmony as the next step in which you “feel now that it is one thing” or that you know it is separate from everything else and can understand the complexities of the object. And finally he explains radiance as when one realizes the objects beauty because of its wholeness and harmony and is enchanted by it. All of this is significant because Stephen is finally able to explain why art and nature is beautiful. He is able to use language to express his emotions and is able to explain a complex idea like beauty in a way that almost makes sense to me.
As for my personal opinion of the novel, I have mixed feelings. On one hand I disliked it. I found it to be boring, hard to understand, and filled with unnecessary descriptions. The entire plot centered on religion for much of the book, which I found hard to relate to because religion is not a central part of my life. Despite this, however, I am able to appreciate what this novel does offer. I have never read a work before this that was able to identify with the growth and maturation of an individual as this one did. Stephen’s struggles with his views changing from his parents and everything he was taught growing up was very easy to relate to because it is something that we all deal with in growing up. There were many places where I thought, “Wow I have actually been feeling the same way lately.” Joyce was really able to express what it is like to grow up and to mature which I think gives this work merit even though I also think that it was boring. This is where my mixed feelings come from. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but it went to slow in some places to keep my attention.
