Stephen’s pride is also a cause of his isolation. From the beginning, pride — a mortal sin — keeps him away from others (Drew 276). He yearns for “order and elegance” in his life. He feels superior to his family and to his peers. He feels superior to his country, and consequently attempts to improve it (Hackett 203). In the end, pride drives him to lonely exile. Increasingly Stephen denies his actual family in Dublin so as to assume kinship with his eponymous family in Greece:

Began with a discussion with my mother. . . Said religion was not a lying-in hospital. Mother indulgent. Said I have a queer mind and have read too much. Not true. Have read little and understood less. The she said I would have to come back to faith because I had a restless mind. This means to leave church by backdoor of sin and re-enter through the skylight of repentance. Cannot repent.

(Joyce 243)

In essence, Stephen becomes less and less Dedalus, and more and more Daedalus (Ellman 16). Is Stephen’s pride justified by his talent? Is it merely selfish? Has pride driven him to a fall, as it did Icarus and Lucifer? Joyce uses uncertainties like these to involve his audience in the changing themes of the novel.

In Portrait of the Artist, a mature artist looks back over his youth, perceiving what was significant to his development, estimating what was vital and what was transitory in that evolvement (Peake 56). Using this to his advantage, Joyce extends and intensifies Stephen’s alienation, for the overpoweringly monotonous and constrictive society in which he resides provide him the best conditions under which he can best work (Beebe 163).

Thus, by observing and graphically depicting what confines man, how man overcomes this confinement, and how man lives once he is free, James Joyce discusses the motivations and the outlets for human expression. Like Daedalus and Icarus, Stephen Dedalus assumes the role of a persecuted hero, who must over