A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is a kind of autobiographical novel which is one of the most significant literary works of the twentieth century, and one of the most innovative. Its originality shocked contemporary readers on its publication in 1916. In this novel, Joyce exploits new concept formation for a new kind of novel using the unique writing skills like 'epiphany', 'the stream of consciousness' etc.
This novel charts the intellectual, moral, and sexual development of Stephen Dedalus, from his childhood listening to his father's stories, through his schooldays and adolescence to the brink of adulthood and independence, and his awakening as an artist. Growing up in a Catholic family in Dublin in the final years of the nineteenth century, Stephen's consciousness is forged by Irish history and politics, by Catholicism and culture, language and art.
Stephen is represented as a typical symbol of the isolated intellect who refuses to accept anything about his familar surroundings such as family, religion, country.
He doesn't believe that his home, religion, and his country can give him spiritual comfort. Stephen thinks that his father is a boaster, snob, not helpful to him, and his mother loves the religion blindly and enforces him to follow it. He thinks almost every Irish person is overwhelmed by the religion(Catholicism), and that Ireland suffers from moral paralysis. Politicians also fight one another for their own interests.
In the middle of the whirlpool, Stephen constantly seeks for his identity as an artist. As he breaks away from the surroundings and troubles gradually, he positively confronts and challenges the surroundings which have oppressed him so far. He protests to the school principal against Dolan's unfair pandybat and shows a rebellious spirit insisting on what, he thinks that is right with Byron. He attempts to escape from reality through the sexual experience to solve the wandering and isolation of the adolescence. After the physically sinful act, he repents and recovers himself to have a new life. And through the mythic origins of his name and the epiphany of the bird-girl which was in the sea, he decides to be an artist regardless of leaving his family, country and religion. He is finally able to conquer the conflict with that resolution and forms concrete artistic vision so that he can reach his esthetic world.