Ireland: For centuries, dreamers and tourists have associated it with rolling green hills, cool, misty fog, smiling, barefoot farmers, moss-covered stone castles, and haunting Celtic songs. This romantic image may please the outsider, but for Stephen Daedalus, the hero of James Joyce's autobiographical masterpiece "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," it is a vision that could not be further from the truth. Stephen's Ireland is a land of restrictions and hypocrisy, of filth and poverty, of monotony and restlessness: in short, a place from which he longs to escape. Throughout the novel, the image of a cow recurs as a motif and becomes an important factor in the development of Stephen Daedalus' vision of his country and the Church that is an integral aspect of it (and, consequently, of life in general). The motif follows Stephen from his relatively happy and innocent childhood, through the growing difficulties of his early adolescence, to the final disillusionment of his youth. Each example is paired with Stephen's emotional response to Ireland and the Church, his relationship with each institution, and his feelings about life in general. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original EssayThe cow is first encountered on the very first page of the novel: "Once upon a time and a good time it was there was a muumuck coming down the road" (7). This scene occurs early in Stephen's life and describes his earliest memories of his parents and the stories his father told him. It illustrates a time when the hero was a carefree, happy child and knew very little about the nature of his country or his religion; the "moocow" is, therefore, a symbol of her small, peaceful place in Ireland, in a home with a father who tells stories, a mother who plays the piano, and Uncle Charles and Dante. However, while Stephen has not yet discovered the negative aspects of his homeland, the first sentence foreshadows his later discovery. The cow is "coming down the road"; it can be assumed that this road is Stephen's life, and he is "baby tuckoo", the boy who is approached by the cow. Although the cow appears to be a peaceful and gentle creature, as evidenced by the childish name "moocow", and Stephen is "a Nicens boy", this will no longer be true when the two meet. The cow will prove to be a suffocating and dangerous force in the boy's life, and the boy will become a brooding cynic who must abandon the cow to avoid being destroyed by it. Joyce organizes this event not by finishing the story, but simply by setting it up and letting it fade away, suggesting that the reader himself will discover the conclusion by reading the novel. The next encounter with the cow motif occurs in Book 2, when Stephen has returned to his family's home in the countryside. This is a time in his life when he begins to better understand the world around him: he begins accompanying Uncle Charles on his errands and listening when Charles and his father discuss worldly matters such as Irish politics. However, he is not yet fully mature and does not fully understand his life or his country. He meets a boy his age named Aubrey Mills and they begin playing adventure games together, a childish activity that emphasizes the fact that Stephen is still a child; as a result, the cows he comes into contact with are still seen in a positive light. The boys love driving the milk cart and the cows look beautiful to Stephen in the summer sun. When September arrives, however, Aubrey goes to school and Stephen stays at home because his family can no longer afford Clongowes. While Stephen is relieved not to have to return to his hated oneschool, he begins to understand that all is not well: "Dimly he understood that his father was in trouble and that this was the reason why he himself had not been sent back to Clongowes" (64). Stephen has an idea that something is wrong, but he has not achieved a full understanding of the problem, and therefore his feelings about the cows are mixed. At one point, cows and their milk are repugnant to him, but at another moment he is indifferent towards them and even thinks that the life of a milkman might be pleasant - and then, again, he is filled with fear while a feeling he is gripped by uneasiness. . Something is wrong, but he doesn't know what. His world is expanding, but he doesn't know where it's going and where it will take him. Meanwhile, the cow seems to lurk in the background, good and bad, beautiful and revolting. Stephen doesn't know what this, or his life, will bring. The following mentions of the cow emerge when Stephen is lured back into Catholicism after his "fall" with the Dublin prostitute. He goes to a religious retreat, where he listens to Father Arnall's fiery sermons, sermons that scare him into devotion for a short time. On the first night, however, after the priest has given only a short speech and Stefano has returned home, he has not yet been overcome by fear and only feels lethargically depressed. He stands "apathetic and dishonored, watching with darkened eyes, helpless, troubled and human for a bovine god to stare at" (111). While this may well be the first stage of Stephen's immersion in self-loathing and a passion for repentance, it may also be one of his first honest moments of doubt. The god who stares at him is not yet described as powerful, or omnipotent, as he will later be, but rather as "bovine", a term that recalls the biblical story of the cult of the golden calf. At this point, Stephen's depression may stem from his first inkling that the all-powerful religion that has such a strong hold on every aspect of his life, from family to country to school, may actually be false, a golden calf that it is nothing more than an idol before which fools bow. And even the mere hint of such an idea may be enough to depress Stephen as much as an all-consuming threat of eternal damnation. The next day, Stephen is plunged into dismay at the priest's menacing sermon. It's a speech that has the power to make Stephen a very devout Catholic, if only for a short time. Even in the midst of such a speech, however, a hint of what is to come in Stephen's life creeps in through the dark use of the cow motif. When describing the birth of Jesus Christ, the priest states that Jesus was born "in a poor stable in Judea" (118). Although the priest literally refers to the stable in which Jesus was born, in the symbolic scheme of the novel the stable could well be Ireland. Since the cow is used to represent Stephen's country of birth and adolescence, as well as the Church, the use of the term "cow" for the birthplace of Jesus can be seen as a reference to Joyce's birth - and, of course, by Stephen. - belief that the hypocritical and tyrannical entity that is the Church belongs only to filthy and narrow Ireland, represented by the stable. This is a fact that Stephen will eventually realize, thus eliminating all effects of the terrifying sermon. The next time the cow motif emerges will be when Stephen becomes completely disillusioned with his religion and his country. He now studies at Dublin University and is considered something of a nonconformist because he refuses to be proud of Ireland and become a nationalist. His friend Davin, a simple and moral young man devoted to the nationalist cause, encourages "Stevie" to conform andthink of Ireland before anything he values. Stephen draws a direct parallel between Ireland and cows when he says, “Ireland is an old sow that eats her farrowing” (203). Literally, Stephen refers to a mother cow eating her disabled calf, but figuratively Stephen refers to Ireland and its leaders' tendency to destroy the people it produces if they get it wrong. Specifically, Stephen might cite the Church's rejection of Charles Parnell. Because the Church was a powerful force in Irish life and politics in Stephen's day, its officials had enormous power to make or break national figures. As Stephen grows up, those close to him praise Parnell for his leadership in nationalism, and Dante holds a brush in his print for him. But when it is discovered that Parnell is having an affair with Kitty O'Shea, a married woman, he is denounced by the Church and, consequently, by the majority of Irish religious people. As Stephen lies in Clongowes Infirmary, he hears the news of Parnell's death. At his first meal as an adult, Stephen witnesses a heated debate between his father and friend, who still support Parnell, and Dante, who agrees with the Church's condemnation. After Parnell dies of exhaustion and his career is destroyed by the oppressive forces of the Irish Church, Stephen retains this image of Ireland as a land that could very well destroy what it creates. Stephen understands that he himself, like Parnell and many others, is largely a creation of Ireland, and admits this to Davin: "This race, this country, and this life have produced me" (203). He also understands that the fanatical religion that has taken hold of him and made him feel miserable and guilty for his every action has the power to destroy him as a person, that the encouragement he received to become a priest in the Irish Church would make his life monotonous and unbearable, and that nationalism for the country has the power to destroy his dreams for the future if he joins the cause. He does not want to be the son of the Irish sow, and therefore rejects "the cow". The cow motif returns during the development of Stephen's aesthetic theory. While talking to Lynch, he asks, "If a man furiously cutting a block of wood creates an image of a cow, is that image a work of art?" (214). While this is not a direct reference to the parallel between the cow and Ireland, it can be argued that the image of the cow was inserted here to contrast Stephen's vision of his future as an artist with Ireland's lack of conductiveness to this purpose. When Stephen has his epiphany on the beach upon seeing the bird-like girl, he realizes that his purpose in life is to create art, the kind of art that glorifies the beauty of humanity and earthly matters, not high, divine concepts like the countryside. and religion. Since Stephen reaches this epiphany after deciding that he can never be a Catholic priest, the epiphany is his first step towards realizing that he cannot be an artist if he remains in Ireland. When he mentions a cow in his discussion of beauty, he is once again referring to an oppressive Ireland that will never allow him to blossom as an artist – an idea that Lynch reinforces when he states, “What do you mean by talk of beauty and beauty? imagination in this miserable, God-forsaken island? No wonder the artist retreated into or behind his work after perpetrating this country" (215). One of the last encounters with the cow motif occurs when Stephen meets his friend Cranly, who is reading a book called “Diseases of the Ox.” This title is appropriate because it embodies Stephen's final conclusion about Ireland: it is a sick, dirty, land.