Part 3
Enslavement of the Mind
In the same way that race can be a despotic regime under which to live,
religion also plays the role of oppressor. It has, for centuries, set the stage for
conflict as group after group has battled for dogmatic supremacy. Dogma is simply
another method for people to categorize others—believers and non-believers,
practicing and non-practicing, saints and sinners—and form opinions based on
those categories.
Religious doctrines place limitations on thoughts, feelings, and actions with
canon, fable, and prophet—Jews have the Torah, Christians have Jesus, Buddhists
have Buddha, Muslims, the Quran. Those outside of the boundaries are considered
defective, not part of the crowd, and it’s that theme—enslavement by dogma of the
religious sort—that serves as the impetus of James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the
Artist As a Young Man.
Growing up in a typical, Southern, Church of Christ family, I understand this
side of religion entirely too well. Church was a bizarre experience for me as a child. I
simply had too many innocent questions and never received sufficient answers to
allow myself to fully commit. How exactly is one brought back from the dead? If
someone changed the words of this book thousands years ago, how do I know that
what’s in this leather-bound book are right? And why did the Sunday School
teachers never have answers other than “Because that’s what God wants,” “Because
that’s what the Bible says,” or “Heather, sit down and stop asking so many
questions.”
But I continued the routine (Stephen from Chapters 1 and 2 would likely be
proud of my effort) and attempted piety well into my teenage years, hoping that one
day all my questions would be made divinely clear and I would be transformed into
a churchly state.
But, I never found that enlightenment; Joyce’s description of Stephen’s “cold
lucid indifference” at the beginning of Chapter 3 would be more fitting to describe
those years. I was like a zombie, plodding into and out of church with a bleakness
reserved for the undead. Chapter 4 begins with Stephen experiencing a similar dry
spell. Sensual sections give way to academic and abstract terms, as Stephen begins
to realize that a saintly life may not be in the cards, even though he attempts to
become stoic and serious about his religion. Joyce’s colorful language is drained out,
leaving only a grayscale of Stephen’s life. “I have amended my life, have I not?”
Stephen asks, and later explicitly acknowledges that his life has been changed.
However, he never says that this change is for the better.
Section 2 of Chapter 4 finds Stephen in the headmaster’s office, wherein he is
asked if he would ever consider life in the priesthood. The prospect of an orderly,
admirable life as a priest intrigues Stephen. However, that feeling is quickly replaced
with one of foreboding and Stephen’s secular fate is sealed—on the walk home, he
passes a statue of the Virgin Mary, a symbol that previously filled him with zeal, yet
he feels cold towards it. Upon arriving home, Stephen knows that he belongs in the
world, not the refuge of the church.
The realization of where his soul will be born sets Stephen on fire. He wants
to leave for school and feels that a great fate awaits him in the freedom of university
and living outside his typical context, something to which his mother is bitterly [and
unsurprisingly] opposed. Aren’t most mothers reticent to let their babies go down a
path deemed undesirable?
After encountering some classmates, Stephen reflects on the story of
Daedalus. He feels a connectedness to the mythic Greek, especially the way Daedalus
flew out of imprisonment. Stephen Dedalus is empowered by the thought, and the
prospect of building a new soul that will fly him out of his current doldrums puts
him into a frenzy, the likes of which religion never stirred. During his postideological haze, Stephen sees another female symbol; this time though, it isn’t the
Virgin Mary who stirs him, it is a girl wading into the water with her skirt hiked up.
Stephen allows himself to make eye contact and to appreciate a woman in a way
which would usually fill him with guilt. It seems that he’s found the path toward
enlightenment, and Joyce’s words become full again: “This was the call of life to his
soul not the dull gross voice of the world of duties and despair, not the inhuman
voice that had called him to the pale service of the altar.”
The day my mind, the one allegedly created to appreciate my supreme
creator, was stifled and belittled—“These questions mean you don’t have enough
faith”—was the day I accepted that my family’s version of God wasn’t for me.
Unfortunately, this happened at such a young age that I didn’t know it was OK, and
even good, to think critically and create my own life.
Joyce also uses this point in the book to explore the individual/community
dynamic, which complements the idea of an outsider very well. At this point,
Stephen has taken a path with which his mother disagreed and is much more freethinking and individual than ever before, but his family ties are weaker than ever.
He is an outsider in his own family. And Stephen’s social life is just as lonely—he
doesn’t feel as patriotic as Davin, or as patriotic as MacCann, and he doesn’t share
affection with Temple. However, Stephen is alone in a crowd—he is not isolated
physically. His family may repel him, but he continues to see him and interacts with
siblings warmly. He acknowledges the deaths of friendships, but networks and has
jovial encounters with them.
But things change in the third section of Chapter 5—Stephen’s journey to find
himself takes him further away from his community, and this is represented
through an interaction with a woman: his mother.
Stephen tells a friend Cranly about a conversation with his mother, wherein
she asked him to go to Easter services at church. But, Stephen can no longer coexist
with the things he used to abide; he no longer feels religious faith and does not want
to go with his mother. He is pushing against all forms of ideological servitude and
feels he has to cut out the things that are holding him back, including university.
Cranly hints at the dangers of total isolation, but his warnings fall on deaf ears.
Pursuing artistic fulfillment is Stephen’s only goal because he sees the realization of
himself through such expression as the only way for him to be redeemed. Art,
namely literature, is Stephen’s religion. But Cranly provides foreshadowing for
Stephen’s and the book’s conclusion.
It’s at this point the novel switches to a journal form. There is no longer an
omniscient viewpoint, only Stephen’s. The story is told through dated entries
written by Stephen, from his perspective. He’s left university and muses on
thoughts, perceptions, and trivial events. He recounts a conversation in which his
mother accused him of reading too much and losing his faith. But he cannot
acquiesce to her religious dogma and cannot repent. He holds firm to the idea that
prescribed mandates from above will serve only to stifle his artistic and personal
growth, and his personal revolution grows to include (rather, exclude) the people he
associates with that ideology.
Revolution is the aggressive defeat of a social order in order to implement a
new system. In Stephen’s case, he had to fight religion and the people devoted to it.
He sought fulfillment through art, and chose to live in the secular world rather than
enduring a life of spiritual servitude in a system that muffled his soul. He realized
that he could unearth himself through art, not religion, and send his literature into
the world as an offering of himself that would live beyond his body, an eternal
existence similar to Christian ideas of the life after death.
However, creating himself came at the cost of losing community. He didn’t fit
into the church’s scheme, and therefore was on the outside of it. I understand this all
too well.