A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Independent Study

The real wars of this world are fought not on bloodied fields or tarnished shores, but in the minds and hearts of men rioted against themselves. Ever present in this eternal struggle is the presence of iniquity, the existence of which is the touchstone of our experience and the defining element of our humanity. In his pioneering novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce delves into the warring evil that confronts his protagonist on the plane of Stephen’s internal emotions and experiences. Offering several instances of the presence of evil as well as Stephen’s defiance against it, Joyce’s book reveals that malevolent acts and events are an inexorable outgrowth of the ubiquitous impiety within each of us. Also illustrating this, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns provides a much more external and sickening array of human cruelty. Though Stephen may not witness the evil within the world to nearly the same extent as Hosseini’s Mariam and Laila, his character still presents probing mental insights into why bad things happen. Overall, both novels demonstrate the presence of evil in this remarkable revolving rock and its affects on the individuals who inhabit it.