The Concept of Totalitarian Education in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Abstract

The most profound issue directly concerned with the present and future of human civilization might be education. The aim of this paper is to expose the profound undermining effect of the totalitarian system of education and politics on wiping out Stephen Dedalus's (the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) individuality and free choice which is about to reduce him to an ideological subject. In this research, the German thinker and philosopher, Hanna Arendt's political theory, which is an outcome of ideology, including her critique of totalitarianism and its destructive impacts on individuals is employed by focusing on the ambivalent function of the educational institution represented in James Joyce’s novel A portrait of an artist as a young man. The research also uncovers the reality of transforming the schoolrooms, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, into ideological places sowing certain doctrines and codes in ready to-grab minds. The totalitarian structure of education strips Stephens and his schoolmates of the privilege of experiencing their childhood and implants ideological principles in their minds by depriving them the right of being educated in the private domain. Stephen Dedalus represents an isolated sensitive student who oscillates between his private inspiring world and the cruel public one. This paper also tends to highlight the roles of a totalitarian system, in creating a unified customized identity for all individuals along with Stephen’s process of identity creation and its transformation. it is found out that, due to the totalitarian system, Stephen through an increasing sense of up rootedness and superfluousness besides a state of loneliness could free himself from the social, familial and religious attachments. He could adopt a new independent trend of life and art.