Ireland: for centuries, dreamers and tourists have associated it with rolling green hills, cool misty fog, smiling barefoot peasants, castles moss-covered stone walls and haunting Celtic songs. This romantic image may be appropriate abroad, but for Stephen Daedalus, the hero of James Joyce's autobiographical masterpiece "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," it is a vision that could not be further away of the truth. Stephen's Ireland is a land of restriction and hypocrisy, of filth and poverty, of monotony and apprehension - in short, a place where he longs to escape. Throughout the novel, the image of a cow recurs as a motif and becomes an important factor in the development of Stephen Daedalus's view of his country and of the Church which is an integral part of it (and, therefore, of life in general). The motif follows Stephen from his relatively happy and innocent childhood, through the increasing difficulties of his early adolescence, to the final disillusionment of his youth. Each example is associated with Stephen's emotional response to Ireland and the Church, his relationship with each institution, and his feelings about life in general. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The cow is first encountered on the very first page of the novel: “Once upon a time and a very good time, "There was a cow coming down the road" (7). This scene takes place early in Stephen's life and describes his earliest memories of his parents and the stories his father told him. It illustrates a a time when the hero was a carefree and happy child and knew very little about the nature of his country or its religion; the "moocow" is therefore a symbol of his peaceful little place in Ireland, in a house with a storyteller father, a mother who plays the piano, and Uncle Charles and Dante However, although Stephen has not yet discovered the negative aspects of his native country, the first sentence foreshadows his later discovery The moocow cow "comes along the road"; that this road is Stephen's life, and that he is "baby tuckoo", the boy that the cow approaches. While the cow seems to be a peaceful and gentle creature, as evidenced by the child's name "moocow", and Stephen is "a nice little boy", this will no longer be the case when the two meet. The cow will prove to be a stifling and dangerous force in the boy's life, and the boy will become a brooding cynic who must abandon the cow to avoid being destroyed by it. Joyce sets up this event by not ending the story, but simply setting it up and letting it flow, suggesting that the reader will discover its conclusion for themselves as they read the novel. The next encounter with the cow motif occurs in Book 2, when Stephen is back at the family home in the countryside. It was a period in his life where he began to better understand the world around him: he began accompanying Uncle Charles on his errands and listening to Charles and his father discuss worldly matters such as Irish politics. However, he is not yet fully mature and does not fully understand his life or his country. He meets a boy his age named Aubrey Mills and they begin playing adventure games together, a childish quest that highlights the fact that Stephen is still a child; the cows he comes into contact with are therefore always seen in a positive light. The boys love driving in the milk wagon and the cows look beautiful to Stephen in the summer sun. However, when September comes,Aubrey goes to school and Stephen stays home because his family can no longer afford Clongowes. While Stephen is relieved not to have to return to his hated school, he begins to understand that all is not well: "In a vague way, he understood that his father was in trouble and that was the reason for which he himself had not been sent. back to Clongowes" (64). Stephen has the idea that something is wrong, but he has not achieved a specific goal. He fully understands the problem and so his feelings about the cows are mixed. at one moment the cows and their milk revolt him, at another moment he is indifferent to them and even thinks that the life of a milkman could be pleasant - and here again he is filled with dread as a feeling of destabilization lends him 'invades. Something is wrong, but he doesn't know what. His world is expanding, but he doesn't know where it's going or where it will take him. , good and bad, beautiful and revolting. Stephen does not know what this – or his life – will bring. The next mentions of the cow come when Stephen is drawn back into Catholicism after his “fall” with the Dublin prostitute. He goes on a religious retreat, where he hears Father Arnall's fiery sermons - sermons that frighten him into devotion for a short time. The first night, however, after the priest has given only a brief speech and Stephen has returned home, he has not yet been gripped by fear and only feels lethargically depressed. He stands “listless and dishonored, looking with dark eyes, helpless, disturbed and human, waiting for a bovine god to gaze upon” (111). While this may very well be the first step in Stephen's descent into self-loathing and his passion for repentance, it may also be one of his first honest moments of doubt. The god who gazes upon him is not yet described as powerful or all-powerful, as he would later be, but rather as “bovine,” a term reminiscent of the biblical account of the cult of the golden calf. At this point, Stephen's depression may stem from his initial idea that the all-powerful religion that has such a hold on every aspect of his life, from his family to his country to his school, may in fact be false , a golden calf which is nothing more than an idol before which fools can bow down. And the mere thought of such an idea can be enough to depress Stephen as much as an all-consuming threat of eternal damnation. The next day, Stephen is plunged headfirst into dismay at the priest's threatening sermon. It is a speech that has the power to make Stephen a very devout Catholic, even if only for a short time. However, even in the midst of such a speech, a hint of what is to come in Stephen's life slips through the obscure use of the cow motif. When describing the birth of Jesus Christ, the priest states that Jesus was born “in a poor stable in Judea” (118). Although the priest literally refers to the barn in which Jesus was born, in the symbolic scheme of the novel the stable could very well be Ireland. As the cow is used to represent the country of Stephen's birth and adolescence as well as the Church, the use of the term "stable" for the birthplace of Jesus can be seen as a reference to Joyce's country - and , of course, to Stephen's. - the conviction that the hypocritical and tyrannical entity that is the Church only belongs to dirty and confined Ireland, represented by the stable. This is a fact that Stephen will eventually realize, thus undoing all the effects of the terrifying sermon. The next time the cow motif appears is when Stephen becomes completely disillusioned with hisreligion and country. He is now a student at Dublin University and is considered something of a maverick because he refuses to be proud of Ireland and become a nationalist. His friend Davin, a simple and moral young man devoted to the nationalist cause, encourages “Stevie” to conform and think of Ireland above all that he values. Stephen draws a direct parallel between Ireland and cows when he says, “Ireland is an old sow that eats her young” (203). Literally, Stephen is referring to a mother cow who eats her disabled calf, but figuratively, Stephen is referring to Ireland and the tendency of its leaders to destroy the people it produces if they are wrong. More specifically, Stephen may be citing the Church's rejection of Charles Parnell. As the Church was a powerful force in Irish life and politics in Stephen's time, its officials had enormous power to build or destroy national figures. As Stephen grows up, those close to him praise Parnell for his leadership in nationalism, and Dante keeps a brush in his press for him. But when it was discovered that Parnell was having an affair with Kitty O'Shea, a married woman, he was denounced by the Church and, consequently, by the majority of Irish clergy. While Stephen lies in Clongowes Infirmary, he receives the news of Parnell's death. At his first adult meal, Stephen witnesses a heated debate between his father and friend, who still support Parnell, and Dante, who agrees with the Church's condemnation. After Parnell dies of exhaustion and his career is destroyed by the oppressive forces of the Irish Church, Stephen maintains this image of Ireland as a land that could very well destroy what it creates. Stephen understands that he himself, like Parnell and many others, is largely a creation of Ireland, and he admits as much to Davin: "This race, this country, and this life has produced me" (203 ). He also understands that the fanatical religion that has taken hold of him and made him feel miserable and guilty for every act has the power to destroy him as a person, that the encouragement he received to become a priest of the Irish Church would have made his life dull and unbearable, and that nationalism for the homeland has the power to destroy his dreams for the future if he joins the cause. He does not wish to be the breeder of the Irish sow and therefore rejects “the cow”. The cow motif reappears as Stephen's aesthetic theory develops. As he speaks with Lynch, he asks, "If a man furiously carving a block of wood makes an image of a cow on it, is that image a work of art?" (214). Although not a direct reference to the parallel between the cow and Ireland, it can be argued that the image of the cow is slipped in here to contrast Stephen's vision of his future as a artist with Ireland's lack of conductivity for this purpose. When Stephen has his epiphany on the beach seeing the bird-like girl, he realizes that his purpose in life is to create art - the type of art that glorifies the beauty of humanity and earthly things, and not noble and divine concepts like the country. and religion. Since Stephen reaches this epiphany after deciding that he can never be a Catholic priest, the epiphany is his first step in realizing that he cannot be an artist if he stays in Ireland. When he mentions a cow in his speech about beauty, he is again referring to an oppressive Ireland that will never allow him to flourish as an artist - an idea that Lynch reinforces when he states: "That do you mean by gossiping about beauty and beauty? imagination in this miserable island abandoned by God? Not.