Thoughts on the Portrait

I am finding James Joyce’s depiction of a young man growing up in post colonial Ireland and his use of imagery and metaphor to convey the burgeoning subtleties of his theme quite intriguing.
“Stephen tried his best but the sum was too hard and he felt confused. The little silk badge with the white rose on it that was pinned on the breast of his jacket began to flutter” (p 8). I found it interesting that the houses in his school would be characterized by the houses of Lancaster and York. The white rose and the red rose. These two symbols come directly from the war of the roses which was the cause of much political turmoil in England in the 16th century. There is definitely a theme of competition here. Comparing English education to a defacto English civil war I thought was an interesting connection. The opening chapter depicting his boarding school life is full of the raucousness of competition. The scrum and scrimmage of the rugby game correlates to the dog eat dog nature of the students.
“but you could not have a green rose” (pg. 9) – Could the green rose be reminiscent of a clover? Although standards of the Plantagenets of England are quite acceptable is there no room for Irish nationalism in this environment? There is this constant contrasting of the colors red (or maroon) and green. The holly and the vines, his geography book with the green Earth and the maroon clouds, this contrast could serve as a metaphorical contrast to the English ( the red cross of st. Henry) and the green of Ireland.

In the first couple pages we also see a depiction of the railroads. Dadelus describes them as stopping, and starting, then a roar, then stopping then starting. We see this partitioned stop and go, stop and go repeated throughout the description. A couple pages later he relates that his life is “like a train going in and out of tunnels…Term, vacation; tunnel, out; noise, stop.” (p. 14) Here he is describing life in the modern industrial terms of the railroads. Is this a critique on how daily life has changed since the inception of mass transit? Is this a foreshadowing of the modern world to come?