Water In Stephen's Spiritual Development As An Artist

In Stephen’s later life, water takes on a complex metaphorical significance to reflect his spiritual development as an artist. First, water represents cleansing. When leaving his home, Stephen undergoes a symbolic baptism. His mother literally cleanses him while, on a figurative level, he detaches himself from his home life and prepares for his future of self-discovery and of spiritual independence. Stephen “allowed his mother to scrub his neck and rot into the folds of his ears and to the interstices at the wings of his nose” (Joyce 179). This passage’s bird reference, “wings”, further establishes Stephen’s association with Daedalus and prepares him for his symbolic flight from home. When leaving home and walking down the avenue, Stephen feels “grey morning light falling about him through

The images of waves, simmering, and bubbling all relate to water. After Stephen vomits and weeps, both signs of self-cleansing, “The rain had drawn off, and amid the moving vapours from point to point of light the city was spinning about herself a soft cocoon of yellowish haze. Heaven was still and faintly luminous and the air sweet to breathe, as in a thicket drenched with showers" (Joyce 145). This scene–dewy, comforting, and reviving–contributes to the purifying meaning of water in regards to Stephen’s spiritual awakening. When Stephen confesses, Joyce employs water imagery: "His sins trickled from his lips, one by one, trickled in shameful drops from his soul festering and oozing like a sore, a squalid stream of vice. The last sins oozed forth, sluggish, filthy" (Joyce 150). Stephen’s confession flows out of him like water, and the priest’s words “fell like sweet rain upon his quaking parching heart” (Joyce 151), contrasting before Stephen confessed when “He could not weep” (Joyce 143), illustrating his impure and uncleansed state. Adilbek Sultanov, student at Nazarbayev University in School of Humanities and Social Sciences, notes that water