Discuss Joyce’s use of Stream of
Consciousness Technique in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man/ Bring out
the distinctive features of Joyce’s Narrative Technique in A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man.
The
narrative voice of A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man is one
of its most spectacular features. Joyce was a pioneer of the stream of
consciousness technique, which is a style of writing in which the narrator
relates everything that happens in the main character’s mind as it occurs.
The novel's approach of explaining how Stephen Dedalus achieves consciousness is
through Joyce's style of a stream of consciousness. We see this most clearly in Chapter One, where
we’re basically inside young Stephen’s head, and we go with him from moment to
moment. In the following chapters, the narrative voice is still intimately
connected to Stephen’s thoughts and memories, but it skips around in time a
little more, sometimes even skipping years over a paragraph break. Throughout
the book, though, the important thing to note is the proximity of the narrator
to Stephen – this is a majorly limited "omniscient" narrator. We
never get to see inside other characters’ heads; instead, we see them the way
Stephen does. The voice knows what Stephen’s thinking and feeling, but it isn’t
identifiable as Stephen.
That is, until the Great Narrative Shift of Chapter Five. All of a sudden, we actually do get a glimpse of Stephen as related by Stephen. The final section of the book, which is composed of Stephen’s diary entries, is narrated in the first person by you-know-who. This is super important; through this shift in narration, we see Stephen finally stepping up to take control of his life (and his story) after his decision to leave home.
That is, until the Great Narrative Shift of Chapter Five. All of a sudden, we actually do get a glimpse of Stephen as related by Stephen. The final section of the book, which is composed of Stephen’s diary entries, is narrated in the first person by you-know-who. This is super important; through this shift in narration, we see Stephen finally stepping up to take control of his life (and his story) after his decision to leave home.
