Images Of Birds And Flight In A Portrait Of The Ar

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Images of Birds and Flight in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man The works of modernist writer James Joyce vibrantly represents unique humanity. His novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is a realistic journey through the mind of Stephen Dedalus. Practically portrayed imagery is a key technique Joyce uses to truly represent the maturity of the protagonist. Among many symbols and depicted images, one of the most recurring is the bird motif. Joyce uses the symbolism of birds to represent Stephen’s desires of freedom, even naming the character after an ancient Greek myth. These metaphors can be found throughout the novel as images of fright, freedom, escape, and love, as well as helping readers to understand Stephen’s complicated life. One of the first insinuations of bird motifs comes in the beginning of the novel. Stephen has a crush on his neighbor Eileen, but when he made this fact known, he was instantly rebuked and chided due to the fact that she is a protestant and he is a Christian. Stephen’s aunt, Dante, tells him “the eagles will come and pull out his eyes” (JOYCE 4). This threat shows how Stephen is oppressed constantly in his life- not only in school and by the Irish government, but even by his own family. He has never had the opportunity to choose his own path of life, seeing that it has been placed before him accordingly to his parent’s liking. This hopelessness alludes to Stephen’s longing of “flight”. Stephen’s namesake, Daedalus, comes from the myth of Daedalus and Icarus. In this story, Daedalus and his son Icarus escape the Minoans on the island of Crete by constructing wings from feathers and wax and flying away to their freedom. However, Icarus, giddy with the ability to fly, ignores his father’s warnings and soars too close to the sun. The rays of heat melt the wax holding the wings together and Icarus plummets

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