In our discussion of chapter 4 of Portrait, we spent a lot of time talking about vocation and how the chapter can be summarized as Stephen rejecting one possible career path and vocation (priesthood) in favor of another (art).
Stephen has been surrounded throughout his life by priests in all of the schools he attended, and he has always enjoyed reading the arcane aspects of Catholicism and discussing them with the priests. He is a bright boy, a boy who likes to study and read, so a career as a priest has probably been on his mind for a long time now. In the beginning of chapter 4 he has achieved an impressive amount of self-discipline and his regimen of prayers, reflections, confessions, and self-mortifications makes it seem even more likely that he will pursue a career in the priesthood. The director of one of his schools notes that his behavior makes him a likely candidate for the priesthood: "In a college like this...there is one boy or perhaps two or three boys whom God calls to the religious life. Such a boy is marked off from his companions by his piety., by the good example he shows to others. He is looked up to by them;he is chosen perhaps as prefect by his fellow soda lists. And you, Stephen, have been such a boy in this college, prefect of Our Blessed Lady's sodality" (170).
For much of his life, Stephen has dreamed of becoming a priest. "How often had he seen himself as a priest wielding calmly and humbly the awful power of which angels and saints stood in reference! His soul had loved to muse in secret on this desire" (171). He performed well in school and self-discipline himself constantly so that he might be offered such a position, and when he is summoned to the directors office he can easily guess the reason for the summons. And yet, when it was time to pull the trigger Stephen hesitated and decided that his childhood ambitions did not quite stack up with his personal abilities and temperament. He realizes he wants to be able to appreciate beauty in life, to have freedom to do what he wishes, and in some way to stand above everyone else, none of which the priesthood offers. He also realizes he lacks the compassion and social skills to be a good priest. With this career now closed to him, he sets his sights on career as an artist.
I don't know about you, but the idea of having a dream career and then realizing it is beyond your personal abilities or temparment is very familiar to me. Throughout my entire life I have had a dream career that always changes as I become disillusioned my dreams. When I was very young I wanted to be a professional baseball player and play for the Chicago Cubs. I soon realized that though I was good enough to be a star on any little league team and above average for travel teams, I was nowhere near good enough to make the majors. I listened to a lot of Cubs games on the radio, so next I wanted to be the radio play-by-play man, modeling myself after Pat Hughes. I figured out after a while that I didn't have the voice or charisma, or the drive to climb the broadcasting ladder all the way up to the major leagues. Next, after reading and rereading the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip collections too many times, I decided to become a cartoonist and at one point had a sketchbook where I jotted down ideas. The problem was that I have no artistic ability, so that fell through as well. Other professions I considered and then rejected included funeral directing, landscaping, language interpreting, and, most random of all, being a crew member on a cargo ship.
Now after rejecting all of these professions, here I am a junior in high school and when I should be picking a possible career I don't know what I want to do. I wish that I had a clear vocation like Stephen does with art. Stephen seems pretty sure that he is destined to become an artist, and I wish I had that confidence. Then again, I suppose I could have a vocation but I am just to skeptical to appreciate it. Stephen does not seem at all skeptical that this "voice from beyond the world" is really calling to him (182). Perhaps I just need to look past the schoolchildren in my own life and find that voice calling from beyond the world.
A crucial aspect of Stephen swapping one vocation for another is the fact that the priesthood is a completely conventional, mapped-out version of a respectable or successful career--it's so obvious a "fit" for Stephen, at least on the surface. But what turns him off is the "chill and order" of the life, once he tries to actually imagine it in a real, day-to-day sense. The significance of the artistic vocation, in contrast, is that it's totally "off the map" for him--it's not a regimented, conventional course of action for him to follow, a group (or "order") to join and immerse himself in.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, there's a real risk in his decision: he leaps into the unknown, which is why he feels he must first "forge" for himself a viable artistic theory before becoming an actual artist. Stephen likes the sense of order, even as he rejects it.
I don't know how this might inform your personal situation, except to point out that the "voice from beyond the world" is clear in one sense (he interprets it unambiguously as pointing him toward art), but in another, it's quite vague (so what does that *mean*? what do I do *now*?). He chooses an ideal and a way of life, not a "profession" or "career." In a sense, we could even say he chooses NOT to have a career in any trad. sense.