A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is considered to be one of the best works written by James Joyce, who was himself considered one of the best things that happened to the English literature. His numerous other works consist of many short stories and novels, such as well-known Dubliners, but none of those were as praised as the aforementioned work was, regardless of whether those were literary critics or its readers. This essay will focus on explaining what it is that makes this work as good as it is.
First, in her essay on modern fiction, Virginia Woolf calls Joyce a spiritualist. This notion of spiritualism is best to be seen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, since Joyce shows an entire set of feelings lining during time in one person, Stephen Dedalus. An entire list of various different emotions is given to a reader to enjoy, starting from childhood ‘ignorance’, I deliberately chose this word instead of ‘innocence’, to the epiphany or revelation in which he realizes that he has to distance himself from the clerical life and come to enjoy his art, literature. We witness his almost painful thoughts and interwoven feelings when he realizes that to do that he has to go out of his birth country, Ireland. We can almost feel the pain and shame Stephen feels when he is looking at his father risqué acts, when drunken and talking to the barmaids in the most disgraceful manner: we feel the pain, this feeling that he is lower than stone on the ground - unintentionally we give this poor young man our full sympathy and share his feelings and thoughts.
Second, this essay praises Joyce for having the ability to capture the life itself. In other words, this meant that the use of various techniques, such as stream of consciousness and styles in language, makes the entire work that simple, so that its readers get the feeling that what they are reading is almost as real as they themselves are. For instance, at the beginning of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man we see Stephen as a little boy, a boy who tends to use child words such as moocow, which is something an adult would merely find interesting, but would never use. As the work develops and Stephen grows older, his language becomes adult-like, which gives readers the feeling that Stephen is maturing and even if it was not mentioned in the book, it would be easily understood.
    Third, the technique of the stream of consciousness itself is one of the important factors that make A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as good as it obviously is. This technique is what made it possible for us to experience a whole range of various different feelings. Using this technique to narrate is quite an interesting and definitively quite successful move Joyce did when he chose how to write the novel, since it is exactly the stream of consciousness that made readers feel like Stephen is like any other man they know, an imperfect man full of doubts, just like we all are; this is the technique that make it possible for readers of this great work to take it close to their hearts and carry it by their side all the way through their lives.
    Moreover, the work itself deals with a motif that is usually quite easy to relate to. That is to say that every single one of us recalls being a child and being asked about nothing and yet we all know how it is like to be an adult man full of doubts - no matter how hard we tried to deny it, there are always many doubts on our mind. On the other hand, none of us is viceless and we all make mistakes, which makes it easier for any reader to understand the mistakes Stephen did when he was a young school boy - we all made mistakes in those times.  This is why we follow Stephen through time understanding him and comparing his decisions and actions with the decisions we think we would make were we in a particular situations instead of him.
    In addition, the work is said to be autobiographical, which is another thing that made A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man such a master piece. In other words, it is suggested that what makes this work this different from the rest of his works is the fact that it was the only Joyce’s work written on his own life. This further means that Joyce did his best to present his own life in brighter shades, but also to justify his action of moving from his home Ireland. Unfortunately, the very nature of the work made it harder on Joyce to be objective while writing - despite all of this, he managed to go beyond superficiality and subjectivity, all resulting in this master piece of English literature.
    To conclude, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is considered to be best from Joyce’s works, for the reasons named above and many others, as well as one of the best works using the technique of the stream of consciousness. I would not go that far to claiming that it is one of the best works in English literature, but there are many literary critics that would agree on the claim that it is. Nevertheless, it is definitively a great master piece and it is worth reading.

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