Motifs in "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young man"

The Portrait concentrated on stating themes, arranging apparently transparent words into configuration of utmost symbolic density. For example during the passage where the director proposes Stephen to enter priesthood , words like "the looped cord", "the shadow"," the skull , twice emphasized waning daylight , "cross blind, "blind to the cross","blinded by the cross" all convey the denial of nature and entrapment for Stephen which the Priest's office represent for Stephen. The central image, the epiphany of …

…represented with equal vagueness by the wraithlike E---C--- to whom he twice writes verse.she is continually assimilated to the image of the Blessed Virgin and of the heavenly Bride. The torture she costs him is the torture his apostasy costs him. His flirtation with her is his flirtation with Christ. The woman is Church . his vision of greeting Mercedes with a "sadly proud gester of refusal is fulfilled when he refuses his Easter communion.