Joyce

I have to admit that I am still learning the basic concept of Modernism because I’m a very Post-Modern thinker. But I do find myself learning new ways of interpreting the material every time our class meets because you all have so many different ideas to bring to the discussion. The most appealing discussion we had in class covered the thought of high value replacing religion. As a child, I was encouraged to explore different religious outlooks, but found the burdens of religion to outweigh the moral lessons taught. When I write burdens, I guess I mean guilt trips. I don’t want religion to tell me how to live my life, just give me basic guidelines to follow. If I want to live with my boyfriend even though we aren’t married, why shouldn’t I?

When I was younger, I remember thinking I could still be a good person and make good moral decisions without the weight of strict scheduling and constant practicing of verse. I guess it just felt like a lot of work to me. I don’t want to get deep into my views on God, because this assignment is supposed to be about the Joyce novel, but I will preface my entry with this: Some days I believe there is a God, others I’m not sure, and still even other times I feel we live, we love, we die, and that’s all. So I guess I just wanted you all to know that I’m confused on the subject so don’t take anything I write as a personal attack on you or your beliefs!

Stephen Dedalus’s struggle with his religion appeals to me. I’ve always believed in making decisions based on the universal human values we discussed in class. Yes, I’d like to do some nasty things to my roommate occasionally, but I don’t because it’s not the right thing to do. In the end, will it make me feel any better, or will I have peroxide in my shampoo, too? Just because I think about these things, doesn’t make me a bad person. It makes me a person… period. We discussed self-awareness. We should understand that we can’t block out ALL pride, greed, lust, wrath, sloth, envy, gluttony, and all those other things religion tells you to not feel or do. In fact, everyone should experience the deadly sins in order to understand his or her emotions and thus reactions toward different situations! I wouldn’t want to anger someone who has never been angry before in his life. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t end well.

Anyway, Stephen struggles the most throughout the novel with his sexuality. It's so sad to me that he has to repress his human desires for Godly beliefs. Yes, as Art mentioned to me in class, we all repress our sexual desires to a degree, but to have to eliminate his sexual impulses altogether because God said so seems… well, cruel. He is just becoming aware of the possibilities of his sexuality and is afraid to explore them. I feel like this is just setting him up for a disappointing and frustrating sexual life later. Because he has to repress this desire now, it could result in one of two obvious outcomes (if you think of others, please comment): He will either have an explosion of his frustration and take it out on someone in the form of rape or murder… or some other terrible crime, OR he will overcome these frustrations in his married life, making his wife a very happy woman. Okay, maybe these are extremes, but I’m upset that Stephen is trying to be a good person and feels he isn’t because he is attracted to women. Big deal, there are greater problems in the world.

I have something to ponder about Stephen’s dilemma. Stephen claims, “The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine” (205). We discussed that this is a declaration of Stephen’s need for freedom from the English language because it is a result of colonization. If this is true and Stephen wants to walk away from this socially shared code, why would he have any qualms about leaving the church? Isn’t the church a representation of something socially shared too? Perhaps his hesitance is a result of his upbringing, but it is an interesting conflict to address. If Stephen doesn’t need English to define arbitrary symbols, then surely he doesn’t need the church to define his morality. I feel Joyce is making a statement with this other than Stephen’s rebellion against English. Joyce wants the reader to know that Stephen is, in some aspects, choosing internal conflict as a result of religion. Stephen’s inspiration for creation comes from this conflict, and as we mentioned in class, the artist is paralleled to God for his ability to create.

When reading Stephen’s poem, we understand this conflict with religion as his inspiration because the speaker is presented as the victim. Stephen never embraces sexuality as a typical human desire, but rather as a crime against the will of God. By integrating this concept into his art, he clearly demonstrates his use of religion in his creative process. It seems as though Stephen is using religion to make art! What would God think? Is art an acceptable reason for questioning His ways? I guess my opinion would be OF COURSE! If God didn’t want art, it wouldn’t be here, right? In the Bible, God says his ways are not our ways. Does this mean that God’s “way” of art was the creation of earth, man, woman, animal, plant, etc.? I really think Joyce wants us to raise these questions when reading Portrait. By questioning God’s word, we create conflict between heavens and earth, which is far greater than any single worldly conflict.