The Which book are you? Test

You are 'a portrait of the artist as a young man' - but that lengthy title would not fit in the score box. It seems fitting that, as the product of an obscure yet truly magnificent genuis, you would resist being pigeon holded in such a manner. Stunningly beautiful, organically artistic and deeply reflective, you are A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. You are somebody who often looks inwards. You plunge the depths of your soul and of the souls of those around you, often finding good and bad things in equal measure. The world influences you to a degree, but you have a distinctive personality and some over riding features which often win through. Both intelligent and sophisticated, your emotional capacity is tremendous. You can be compassionate, even to a fault, and are deeply sensitive. You are still disocvering yourself, but whatever happens, you will always be somebody the rest of us could learn alot from. You are so deeply passionate that those around you often find you a source of inspiration, and draw strength from the way in which you endure despite great suffering. Perhaps the most famous aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce's innovative use of stream of consciousness, a style in which the author directly transcribes the thoughts and sensations that go through a character's mind, rather than simply describing those sensations from the external standpoint of an observer. Joyce's use of stream of consciousness makes A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a story of the development of Stephen's mind. In the first chapter, the very young Stephen is only capable of describing his world in simple words and phrases. The sensations that he experiences are all jumbled together with a child's lack of attention to cause and effect. Later, when Stephen is a teenager obsessed with religion, he is able to think in a clearer, more adult manner. Paragraphs are more logically ordered than in the opening sections of the novel, and thoughts progress logically. Stephen's mind is more mature and he is now more coherently aware of his surroundings. Nonetheless, he still trusts blindly in the church, and his passionate emotions of guilt and religious ecstasy are so strong that they get in the way of rational thought. It is only in the final chapter, when Stephen is in the university, that he seems truly rational. By the end of the novel, Joyce renders a portrait of a mind that has achieved emotional, intellectual, and artistic adulthood. The development of Stephen's consciousness in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is particularly interesting because, insofar as Stephen is a portrait of Joyce himself, Stephen's development gives us insight into the development of a literary genius. Stephen's experiences hint at the influences that transformed Joyce himself into the great writer he is considered today: Stephen's obsession with language; his strained relations with religion, family, and culture; and his dedication to forging an aesthetic of his own mirror the ways in which Joyce related to the various tensions in his life during his formative years. In the last chapter of the novel, we also learn that genius, though in many ways a calling, also requires great work and considerable sacrifice. Watching Stephen's daily struggle to puzzle out his aesthetic philosophy, we get a sense of the great task that awaits him.