Coming Of Age

Words: 619
Pages: 3

Throughout Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, contrasting yet similar evolutions of narration occur. As the young protagonists come of age, they develop an understanding of the world around them. Furthermore, the physiological development of Jane Eyre and Stephen Dedalus through narration shape a larger point about the human condition: that coming of age is a universal experience that ultimately concludes with a human unrecognizable from it’s prepubescent self. For the first 180 pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’s, Stephen Dedalus’s life is accounted in third person limited point of view. The memories and thoughts of Stephen are portrayed within the context of his age, as, …show more content…
As his thoughts become more complex, he begins to constantly questions his identity through the repetition of his name being recalled. It occurs while reflecting on his sexual desires, as in the following passage, “Could it be that he, Stephen Dedalus, had done those things? His conscience sighed in answer. Yes, he had done them, secretly, filthily, time after time, and, hardened in sinful impenitence, he had dared to wear the mask of holiness before the tabernacle itself while his soul within was a living mass of corruption. How came it that God had not struck him dead? The leprous company of his sins closed about him, breathing upon him, bending over him from all sides” (89), and while questioning joining the order, as in the following passage, “The Reverend Stephen Dedalus, S. J. His name in that new life leaped into characters before his eyes and to it there followed a mental