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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is above all a portrait of Stephen Dedalus. It is through Stephen that we see his world, and it is his development from sensitive child to rebellious young man that forms the plot of the novel. There are ....

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... yet eventually hurts her by rejecting her Catholic faith. Taught to revere his father, he can't help but see that Simon Dedalus is a drunken failure. Unhappy as a perpetual outsider, he lacks the warmth to engage in true friendship. "Have you never loved anyone?" his fellow student, Cranly, asks him. "I tried to love God," Stephen replies. "It seems now I failed." The force that eventually unites these contradictory Stephens is his overwhelming desire to become an artist, to create. At the novel's opening we see him as an infant artist who sings "his song." Eventually we'll see him expand that song into poetry and theories of art. At t ...