The Complexity of Language Increases in Proportion to the Protagonist's Development in Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

The following passage from A Portrait occurs in Chapter 1 of the novel, just after the protagonist Stephen Dedalus begins his schooling. He is walking with a group of his schoolmates, one of whom speaks to another boy, Simon Moonan. Young Stephen hears a speakers sentence, and his point immediately picks up on the word suck, declaring that it is a queer word (l.2).

Ugly sound

- We all know why you speak. You atomic number 18 McGlades suck.

Suck was a queer word. The fellow called Simon Moonan that name because Simon Moonan used to sleeper the prefects false sleeves behind his back and the prefect used to let on to be angry. But the sound was ugly. Once he had washed his hands in the lavatory of the Wicklow Hotel and his father pulled the stopper up by the chain after and the dirty water went guttleward(a) through the hole in the basin. And when it had all gone down slowly the hole in the basin had do a sound like that: suck. Only louder.

To remember that and the white serve of the lavatory made him feel cold and then live(a). in that location were two cocks that you turned and water came out: cold and hot. He felt cold and then a dwarfish hot: and he could see the names printed on the cocks. That was a truly queer thing.

And the air in the corridor chilled him too. It was queer and wettish. But before long the gas would be lit and in burning it made a light noise like a little song. Always the same: and when the fellows stopped talking in the rumpus room you could hear it. (7-8)

Joyces text presents Stephens consciousness in its early stages of ontogeny characterized by simplicity of language and ideas. Joyce is...

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