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Literary style

Stylistically, the novel is written as a third-person narrative with minimal dialogue, though towards the very end of the book dialogue-intensive scenes involving Dedalus and some of his friends, in which Dedalus posits his complex, Thomist aesthetic theory, and finally journal entries by Stephen, are introduced. Since the work covers Stephen's life from the time he was a child to his growing independence and ultimate abandoning of Ireland as a young man, the style of the work progresses through each of its five chapters, with the complexity of language gradually increasing. The book's opening pages have famous examples of Stephen's thoughts and conscious experience when he is a child. Throughout the work, language and prose are used to portray indirectly the state of mind of the protagonist, and the subjective impact of the events of his life. Hence the fungible length of some scenes and chapters, where Joyce's intent was to capture the subjective experience through language, rather than to present the actual experience through prose narrative. The writing style is also notable for Joyce's omission of quotation marks; he indicated dialogue by beginning a paragraph with a dash, as is common in French.