Existentialism in English Literature: A Comparative Study of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues

Running head:ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ENGLISH LITERATURE
The evolution of literature and philosophy highlighting individual being, liberty and
independence is termed as existentialism, which started in nineteenth century and was on its
greatest height during mid-twentieth century. The two stories discussed in this paper are
mainly based on this theme. The major part of this discussion is based on two characters,
namely, Stephen in famous novel of James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
and Sonny in famous short story by James Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues. This paper contains the
information related to various traits of these two characters (Baldwin). In both the books
Stephen and Sonny have shown similarity in terms of their struggle throughout their journey.
Stephen life represented his crush for a girl which turned into dissatisfaction, his father
sinking into alcoholism and wrong other wrong decision taken by him. Similarly Sonny life
represented his drug abuse, his brother not understanding his desire to be a musician and he
was depressed from his imprisonment. Both the tales show human suffering and darkness,
further more James Baldwin apart from the general human suffering focused on racism
towards the African American. And James Joyce focused on the other aspect of the society in
terms of cultural and religious belief system. Both the stories presented human suffering in
different condition and how hard it is for an individual to raise themselves from different
barriers of life.
James Joyce, whose full name is James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, was an Irish author
known for empirical use of language and new literary devices in his different works. The
brilliancy and new forms of his writing made him one of the prominent figures in the world
of novels during twentieth century. Different writers and novelist of that era were inspired by

2ENGLISH LITERATURE
his work and followed his new way of writing in their creations. One of his creations, A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, tells the story of the personal, professional, and
religious growth of the main character or protagonist, Stephan Dedalus. He grew up in
Ireland in the late nineteenth century and deliberately decided to reject all social, family, and
religious constraints to follow his passion and dedicate his life to writing. In the beginning,
Stephan felt alone in his boarding school and missed home but afterwards he got mixed up
and found his place among other children (Joyce).
The family of the protagonist in the given novel is said to be in heavy debts, which
made him to leave boarding school and join a day school. He grew as an excellent writer and
actor of theatre in his day school. For short time duration, Stephan avoided his sacred
upbringing and did different types of offensive things that are considered evil, but, after
attending a holy ceremony he became fearful and decided to live like a religiously devoted
Christian(Joyce). The school’s director observed his dedication towards religion and asked
him to look forward to priesthood (Kim). After a while, the protagonist found the priesthood
conflicting with his passions or hobbies and therefore, he applied for pursuing further studies
in university. At the end, Stephan became a student at the university and spent most of his
time with friends. Also, the last pages of this novel are written as diary entry by the
protagonist, in which he mentioned leaving Ireland to fulfill his passion and make his living
as a writer (Joyce, and Riquelme).
In the given novel, the character of Stephan Dedalus was a bright, emotional, and
short-tempered boy whose upbringing was from a religious catholic family of Dublin,
Ireland. The character is said to represent the life of the author himself. During his student