A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Chapter 2
Stephen and his family have to move due to his father’s deteriorating financial condition. Stephen spends the summer with his uncle Charles, and he tries to work on his ability as a runner with the help of one of his father’s friends. Stephen has a poor time learning the intricacies of athletics, and he blames his visibly unhealthy and slovenly teacher for failing to inspire him to work harder at it. He enjoys spending time with his uncle despite the noxious smell of the tobacco that Uncle Charles often smokes. He is particularly affected by his uncle’s piety when he visits church with him. He enjoys his time in the countryside and begins to read The Count of Monte Cristo. He immerses himself into the adventure-filled world of the novel and becomes particularly interested in the character of Mercedes. He spends hours of his daydreaming about her and begins to feel alienated from the other children of his age. The story of the novel allows him to forget about his family’s problems, but he is aware of them in a vague manner. Alas, his family moves once again.
At first, Stephen is severely unhappy with the new lodgings of his family, but he soon grows to love the freedom of exploring the back alleys of the diverse city. His father busies himself with a new enterprise, and Uncle Charles begins to show signs of senility. Stephen spends time with his old relatives, and chides himself for having poor self-control over his thoughts, although it isn’t clear what thoughts he is referring to her. He attends a peer's birthday party and encounters a young girl named Emma, whom he finds to be extremely fascinating. They share a tram ride back to their neighborhood together and converse with one another while sitting apart. Stephen feels overwhelmed with romantic feelings and has a sudden urge to take her in his arms and kiss her. He doesn’t act on those emotions, instead, he returns home to write a poem for her in the style of Lord Byron, a famous romantic poet. At the end of the summer, Stephen learns that he can no longer attend Clongowes as his father cannot afford the tuition.
In his teenage years, Stephen is attending College Belvedere, a Jesuit school. He is participating in a play in which he has the chief part due because it corresponds with his serious nature. He encounters a couple of his peers smoking cigarettes near the area where he is preparing to go on stage. His acquaintances want Stephen to mock the Rector with his acting, and make fun of him for not smoking with them. They pull his leg about the fact that his father had arrived for the play with a young girl their age, and press Stephen to tell them how he was involved with her. Suddenly, Stephen is reminded of the time that he had gotten into an argument with this same friend on the topic of the greatest English poet. The boys had reacted violently to Stephen’s vehement and repeated assertions that Lord Byron was the greatest poet and that the other boys did not understand poetry well enough to understand this fact. He comes out of his reverie with the memory of his father telling him to be a good catholic, something that Stephen finds his father doesn’t practice. He leaves the boys and performs well in the play, but he avoids his father after the play. Instead, Stephen goes around the city for a walk.
Stephen goes on a train journey with his father to Cork, where his father intends to sell some of his property. Simon Dedalus is excited to return to his college town, where he had studied medicine, and regales his son with stories of his youthful days. Stephen tires of his father’s stories, and disapproves of his blatant alcohol consumption. In Cork, he listens to his father chatting with the waiter about the changes in the city and notices his father’s poor social acumen in dealing with the waiter. They visit his father’s old college where Stephen finds the word “Foetus” carved into a desk and he instantly begins to imagine an old student carving the word into the desk while his classmates looked on. They go to a bar where his father meets an old friend, and they set about drinking some more. Stephen distastefully notes his father’s drinking and habit of ogling women.
Stephen and his family go to the Bank of Ireland to collect money that he had won through a competition. His father talks patriotically about the building, while Stephen leads them to an expensive restaurant for dinner. Stephen spends his prize money lavishly by buying presents for everyone with the hope of restoring some good humor to his family members. He tries to generate a stream of income by loaning money to people at interest, but both of his plans fail. Stephen’s family returns to the struggles of daily poverty and their demeanour towards one another remains poor. Stephen ends up visiting a sex worker one night while walking through the streets of Dublin.
Analysis
In the second chapter, readers accompany Stephen as he struggles to understand his family’s financial problems and the repercussions of that on his own life. In the previous chapter, it is evident that Stephen has difficulty associating with his peers, but by the end of the chapter, he has managed to inspire a certain liking for himself amongst his classmates at Clongowes. His father’s financial irresponsibility causes him to drop out of Clongowes, and move to a dark and dingy part of Dublin. Stephen goes through a similar phase of alienation at Belvedere, but it is interesting to note that he now argues with people about poets and a perspective on morality. Art functions as a powerful medium for Stephen, and his inclination for books like The Count of Monte Cristo foreshadows his involvement in the arts.
Stephen begins to experience a phase of rebellion as he transitions into adolescence and this is most evident in his relationship with his father. Stephen begins to recognize his father as a failure and experiences actual contempt for what he sees clearly to be his father’s shortcomings. The gradual exclusion of his father from the narrative indicates that Stephen is actively directing his mind away from thinking about his father. The walks that Stephen takes around the city literally represent his quest to find his own identity. The seeds of Stephen’s future literary aspirations are evenly dispersed throughout the episodes of his childhood and teenage. Stephen’s quiet and observant demeanor which is a consequence of the alienation he experiences leads him to develop a suitable attitude for a narrator.
