Identity
As a narrative which depicts a character throughout his formative years, M. Angeles Conde-Parrilla posits that identity is possibly the most prevalent theme in the novel.[48] Towards the beginning of the novel, Joyce depicts the young Stephen's growing consciousness, which is said to be a condensed version of the arc of Dedalus' entire life, as he continues to grow and form his identity.[49] Stephen's growth as an individual character is important because through him Joyce laments Irish society's tendency to force individuals to conform to types, which some say marks Stephen as a modernist character.[50] Themes that run through Joyce's later novels find expression there.[51]
Religion
As Stephen transitions into adulthood, he leaves behind his Catholic religious identity, which is closely tied to the national identity of Ireland.[52] His rejection of this dual identity is also a rejection of constraint and an embrace of freedom in identity.[53] Furthermore, the references to Dr Faustus throughout the novel conjure up something demonic in Stephen renouncing his Catholic faith. When Stephen stoutly refuses to serve his Easter duty later in the novel, his tone mirrors characters like Faust and Lucifer in its rebelliousness.[54]
Myth of Daedalus
The myth of Daedalus and Icarus has parallels in the structure of the novel, and gives Stephen his surname, as well as the epigraph containing a quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses. According to Ivan Canadas, the epigraph may parallel the heights and depths that end and begin each chapter, and can be seen to proclaim the interpretive freedom of the text.[55] Stephen's surname being connected to Daedalus may also call to mind the theme of going against the status quo, as Daedalus defies the King of Crete.[1]
Irish identity
Stephen's struggle to find identity in the novel parallels the Irish struggle for independence during the early twentieth century. He rejects any outright nationalism, and is often prejudiced toward those that use Hiberno-English, which was the marked speech patterns of the Irish rural and lower-class.[56] However, he is also heavily concerned with his country's future and understands himself as an Irishman, which then leads him to question how much of his identity is tied up in said nationalism.[52]
The artist
Richard Ellmann wrote that Joyce "recognized his theme, the portrait of the renegade Catholic artist as hero". Critics have examined his debt to the Church theologian Thomas Aquinas for Stephen Dedalus's aesthetic theory.[57][58][59] It's been argued that the theory also draws upon Catholicism's central doctrines in each of its two parts: the first concerned with the artist's intellect, the second with his imagination.[60] Catholic theology distinguishes between God's activity in eternity, His begetting of the Son, the Word, and His activity in time: the Creation (soul and body), the Incarnation—the Word made flesh—and the Consecration in the Mass. Stephen uses Aquinas's application of the three criteria of beauty to the Son of God in eternity to model the artist's act of understanding—"epiphany" in Stephen Hero[61]—and then uses the Creation to model the artist's act of (re)embodiment. In his reveries later, Stephen completes his aesthetic theory by also likening the artist to God at the Incarnation and, in the person of His priest, at the Consecration.[62]
