Stephen Est Bananas

Portrait of a Young Artist has spoiled us. Joyce opens his very mind and allows us to step into the life of
another person. Other novels sometimes seem to place a sort of video camera in front of the character,
and that is the view we have of them. Sure, we get inside their minds a little, with statements like “Oh, he
made Clara so furious!” and “Jack had never seen anything so heartbreaking before, and he thought
of his own mother,” or whatever, but PYA makes it seem as though we are Stephen himself. I
personally have never read anything like this book before.

Of course, this quality of PYA is also what throws off a lot of readers, because it is incredibly intense
to get to know another person--deeply know them. We are deeply getting to know Stephen--his most
shameful thoughts, his most innate tendencies (which even he himself might not realize exist). This
process is overwhelming for us, and the reason for that is Stephen is absolutely insane.

But it’s not his fault; we’re all crazy.

Not crazy in a psychopath infant torturer way (no offense to any psychopath infant torturers reading
this), and usually not in a particularly concerning way to our friends and acquaintances. But if other
people could hear the thoughts we have sometimes, let’s be real, they would probably have us
institutionalized. For example, when I was like eight or something our family was visiting our cousins,
and late at night within a blanket fort, we were discussing superpowers we wanted. My cousin revealed
to me that she wished she had the power to kill someone on the spot. “Not to ever use it, but just to
have it, you know?” she said. I gave the socially expected response of “weird look,” but secretly, I
agreed. I had wished for that power before too (except I had actually imagined myself using it, for the
purpose of crushing that annoying tattle-tail nose picking third grade classmate beneath a ceiling tile.
(To be fair, I didn’t really have a good understanding of death yet. Or maybe I was just a super
villainous child. That’s probably more likely. I don’t wish to kill anymore though, so ‘sall good. No need
to have me committed)). Point is, strange stuff goes on in our minds that we generally keep to
ourselves. And the fact that we don’t feel a need to lock Stephen in a mental health hospital makes
me feel that he’s actually doing pretty well. Although as revealing as PYA is, there is a lot of Stephen
that we still don’t have access to. To accurately know all of Stephen’s mind, we would need a literal
lifetime supply of PYA with moment to moment descriptions.

Mr. Mitchell once mentioned that part of our discomfort with Stephen probably results from the fact that we actually see him in ourselves. Maybe we have fantasized about our own funerals, and gloated in the remorse that our death would surely bring to those who wronged us. Maybe we have pictured ourselves as a stoic hero with a wearisome past, at last returned to the one we so longingly pined for, only to realize that the pain of their betrayal those many years ago has alas alienated our heart and now it is our turn to spurn their desire for you. Sir, I never eat sharp cheddar cheese. Or maybe you have no idea why anyone would ever think such dramatic things. Our class discussions have reinforced the fact that everyone has a unique personality. So there is no wrong thought to have about Stephen. In the process of reading this book, we seem to have fallen into two groups. One group is those of us who can really relate to Stephen, perhaps more so than we would like, and have gone through a strangely invasive experience in these readings to find very personal parts of themselves described on paper for all to read. The other group probably finds Stephen’s behavior a little hard to understand, and they have gone through an eye-opening experience in discovering the psychology of someone who thinks very differently from them. Either way, reading Portrait of a Young Artist has been an interesting journey for all. I am glad that it brought a little Joyce into my life.