Prose+Passage+Essays

__From Portrait of the Artist:__ Passage begins on page 148 at “—Stephanos Dedalos!” and ends on page 149 at “new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.” Throughout this passage, Joyce uses language to allow Stephen to transcend his own insignificance and become a character worth admiring and appreciating. He uses Stephen’s name to connect him to history and mythology. Joyce’s numerous allusions to history and descriptive language transform Stephen, an average teenager, into a hero setting out to explore his true calling: the life of an artist. Joyce ties Stephen’s epiphany to the mythological Daedalus’s quest for freedom by using extended metaphors and imagery centered on descriptions of flight. Joyce begins by calling Stephen’s name a “prophecy.” Once connected to Daedalus, it seems to Stephen that, “all ages were as one to him.” He feels that he can see past his own time and space, and this gives him an air of maturity which makes the reader fell that Stephen is older than his years. Stephen imagines that he can see Daedalus take flight over the ocean, and it makes him feel that he is “the artist forging anew in his workshop…a new soaring impalpable imperishable being.” Stephen sees his name and his connection to history as a signal that he was born to be something and to do something different than the average boy. Joyce uses a description of the real Daedalus to explain Stephen’s epiphany, but it also serves a greater purpose. Most readers would see a teenager giving up an opportunity they seem to have been born for as stupid and immature, especially if they give up their previous calling to become an artist. By making it seem as though history has destined Stephen to become an artist, the reader agrees with Stephen’s epiphany instead of thinking he should have entered the monastic lifestyle. Joyce uses language to make it seem as though history is on Stephen’s side. The next paragraph uses descriptive language to insinuate that Stephen is actually flying. Joyce says that, “his soul was in flight,” and that, “the ecstasy of flight made radiant his eyes and wild his breath and tremulous and wild and radiant his windswept limbs.” By describing flight so vividly, the “flight” of Stephen’s soul seems to be physically taking him somewhere. Though he has not actually moved, the reader feels like Stephen is in a completely different place than he used to be. This is a metaphor for the movement of his passion from religion to art. Some dialogue from his friends comes after this to remind the reader that Stephen has not actually gone anywhere, but has experienced a spiritual and soulful movement. Joyce goes on to compare Stephen to a bird in order to contrast his two possible options. Stephen wished to “cry piercingly of his deliverance to the winds.” Joyce uses this comparison to make it clear how free and happy Stephen felt to decide to pursue a life of art, and how joyful he was to receive, “the call of life to his soul.” Joyce brings the passage and his extensive metaphor to an end with the last sentence of the passage: “He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul, as the great artificer whose name he bore, a living thing, new and soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable.” Joyce uses extensive imagery and metaphor to connect Stephen to the past and illustrate his soul’s flight. He makes the reader feel that Stephen’s cause is a noble and his intentions pure. Stephen is as free, happy, and light as a bird, and the weight of history and the lure of destiny seem to be on his side. Joyce makes the reader feel that Stephen is somewhere and someone else entirely, though he has not even walked out of earshot of his friends. Joyce uses language to convey the message of Stephen’s complete transformation from sadness to joy, and from dullness of life to a strength and joy of purpose.
 * These are sample essays that demonstrate 8 and 9 level writing for the prose passage analysis you will do on the AP Exam.**