In addition, Stephen's natural, maturing sexual urges confuse him even further. Stephen is a keenly intelligent, sensitive, and eloquent young man, but he also possesses the feelings of urgent sexuality, selfdoubt, and insecurity — all universal emotions which are experienced during the development of the average adolescent male. Joyce reveals these tumultuous adolescent feelings through a narrative technique called stream-of-consciousness. He takes the reader into both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind, showing him the subjective and the objective realities of a situation. Using Stephen Dedalus, he explores the depths of the human heart.
This novel is narrated, for the most part, in the limited omniscient point of view; at the same time, it progresses in form from the lyrical and epical modes of expression and moves finally into the dramatic mode of expression. (These "modes of expression" are Stephen's own terms, defining the various kinds of literature; when we encounter them in the novel, we should write down Stephen's definitions and attempt to chart the course of this novel according to its evolving lyrical, epical, and dramatic levels.)
Stephen's thoughts, associations, feelings, and language (both cerebral and verbal) serve as the primary vehicles by which the reader shares with Stephen the pain and pleasures of adolescence, as well as the exhilarating experiences of intellectual, sexual, and spiritual discoveries.
In order to highlight the importance of Stephen's aesthetic experiences, Joyce borrowed a word from the Catholic faith in order to create a literary term of his own. When Stephen suddenly understands "the essential nature of a thing" — whether it is the understanding of a person, an idea, a word, or a situation — he has a moment of profound revelation. Joyce called these moments epiphanies.
Some of Stephen's earliest epiphanies come from his acute sensory awareness and are recorded through Joyce's masterful use of imagery. In the novel, repeated patterns of sounds and remembrances of tastes, touches, and smells are all emphasized. Stephen's eyesight (like Joyce's) is weak; therefore, Joyce emphasizes other senses, and in doing so, he employs the valuable motif method of narration, wherein he records recurrent images of hot/cold, wet/dry, and light/dark images, as well as recurring symbols. He also uses dramatic irony to identify Stephen's basic conflicts and emphasize significant events in his life.
