Portrait of the Artist: Passage Explication

In the comment box below, explicate a passage from the first section of Portrait of the Artist.  Take a look at the link to New Critical theory on the blog tab, and check out this description of the art of explication by some guy named "Mr. Cook":

"A friend, Mr. Ryan Gallagher at Malden (MA) High School, writes, "A passage explication is an essay that takes apart the pieces of a prose passage to demonstrate how it creates meaning [on its own and in relation to the rest of the work]. Its main question can be reduced to the simple idea of 'What does the passage mean? What is its purpose? How does it create that meaning and achieve its purpose? How does it fit in with the rest of the text (if available)?'"

A further note on the etymology of explication: in Latin explicare means "to unfold," so it might be useful to imagine Joyce's text as compressed (or folded) into a particularly dense and layered package of potential meaning.

Your job as an explicator is to unfold the densely layered mass, to report on what you discover as you unfold, and to speculate upon the significance of what you discover.

Another friend, Mr. John Brassil, an AP Language teacher in Maine who is active with the College Board, talks about "close reading" as walking through the landscape of a text. What do you notice? (What is odd? What is interesting? What's similar? What's different? What stands out? What blends in?) And then, what might be significant about what you've noticed in relation to the text as a whole (or, to extend the metaphor, the landscape as an ecosystem)? We recommend that you walk through the passage from beginning to end, commenting as you go about what you notice and how it might be significant."

Let me add here that you should explore your passage with an eye toward the development of Stephen's artistic consciousness.  Based on the evidence you have in the passage, what do you Stephen's artistic temperament or aesthetic theory will be like? 

Portrait, Part I

Please post a response in the comment box to help with our discussion of A Portrait of the Artist . . ., which will most likely take place either Tuesday or the Monday when we return from break.  Try to focus on two principal questions:

What artistic, intellectual, or moral development does Stephen undergo in pt. 1?

What thematic or conceptual threads connect the fragmented narrative?  If you pay attention to the motifs that appear, these may help guide you to an answer to this question. 

Jane Eyre: The End.

Bid a fond farewell to Jane by commenting on the final chapters of the book. What do you make of the ending?  How did the final chapters shift your perspective of the early chapters of the book?  As always, keep in mind the presiding question of the Bildungsroman unit: what has been Jane's intellectual, social, spiritual or artistic development?