A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Stephen Dedalus shares a name with a figure from Greek mythology. According to the Greek myths, Daedalus was renowned for his intellect. He was summoned by the king of Crete to build an inescapable maze for the king’s monstrous son, the Minotaur. Though the maze he built was incredibly complex, Theseus was able to sneak through and kill the Minotaur, thereby enraging King Minos. In his rage, Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus. Daedalus again used his intellect to build wings from feathers and wax, which allowed him and Icarus to escape. Despite Daedalus’s warnings, however, Icarus flew too close to the sun, and the wax in his artificial wings melted, sending him plunging to his death.

Stephen references the myth of Daedalus often. By a quirk of fate, he has an anglicized version of Daedalus’s name as his surname. Stephen sees aspects of himself in the myth of the “old artificer” (288), and uses the myth of Daedalus as a symbolic reference point for his own struggles. Many of Stephen’s worries mirror those of Daedalus. He is an intelligent person who is capable of great things. He feels trapped in mazes, however, both those of his own creation and those built for him by others.