Stephen D(a)edalus: Loner or Liberator?

Yet, for all his lonely self-assertion, Stephen recognizes himself to be a member of a community; it is in relation to the collective, the race, that he formulates his individual aspiration. (vii)

With the obvious allusion to the overreaching Greek hero Daedalus, our young protagonist comes to us as not quite straightforward a hero-to-be. Contrary to his claim that as a liberator of his race he wanted to “forge…the uncreated conscience of [his] race” (pg), Stephen hardly exhibits traits of a liberator. A voluntary social loner instead, he is deeply alienated from his family, friends, and in a larger sense, the Irish community. Yet despite his attempt to assert his individual identity, Stephen finds himself deeply embedded within the “nets” of “nationality, language, [and] religion” (220). For example, he excels in English, writing poetry and essays well, yet recognizes that English is the language of the British colonizers:

The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine…I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his language. (205)

As for religion, at beginning of Part III, Stephen keeps going back to visit the prostitutes, “prowl[ing] in quest of that call” (109), yet he has a sense that this is sinful: “He had sinned mortally not once but many times and he knew that, while he stood in danger of eternal damnation for the first sin alone, by every succeeding sin he multiplied his guilt and his punishment” (110). When Father Arnall gives his sermon, Stephen is greatly affected, unlike the other boys, driving deeper his loner status at the same time inscribing him deeper into this “net” of Irish nationality.

I guess ultimately my post this week comes as a set of questions: (1) can we really take Stephen to be the liberator of his race, and (2) can Stephen’s grappling with these “nets” be allegorical of a nation trying to break free from its British/Roman past, if after all, Stephen’s struggles are also very much personal ones? If so, (3) how fit is the character of Stephen for this hero/liberator role, if he is so deeply embedded in these very “nets” that he is trying to fly free from?