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Essay on Gay Parenting
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nice little boy named baby tuckoo. ” Stephen's father, Simon Dedalus, tells his young son an old-fashioned children's story. Simon begins the story with the traditional "once upon a time" and uses babyish words like "moocow." With his childish yet vivid imagination, the young Stephen identifies with the story's character, "baby tuckoo." (Joyce 213) We see some of Stephen's impressions of early childhood: the cold bed sheets and the pleasant smell of his mother. Throughout the novel Stephen struggles to reject his own, inadequate human father, and replace him with a mythic father.
Stephen is really the only major character in the novel Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man by James Joyce. However, his parents are such strong influences on his thinking that it is useful to give them some analysis here. Mrs. Dedalus begins the novel as the loving and sweet mother who sings to the infant Stephen. Next we see her at the Christmas dinner, taking no sides and ineffectually appealing to everyone to be at peace. It is in this pose that she will remain throughout the novel. She is an ineffectual complainer as she is depicted in the novel. Stephen feels the pull of guilt in relation to her, but little else.
Her latter devotion to the church seems to be a retreat from all moral responsibility of her own. In the face of her failure of a husband and her fallen fortunes, she turns to the church for comfort and tries to pull her son along with her. She seems incapable of understanding Stephen. However, at the end, Joyce does give her an insight. She wishes that Stephen would find out about the heart in his journey......
