Not in the family - a Portrait

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
by James Joyce

He saw clearly too his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he had sought to approach nor bridged the restless shame and rancour that divided him from mother and brother and sister. He felt that he was hardly of the one blood with them but stood to them rather in the mystical kinship of fosterage, fosterchild and fosterbrother - p107

Stephe began to enumerate gliby his father's attributes.
- A medical student, an oarsman, a tenor, an amateur actor, a shouting politician, a small landlord, a small investor, a drinker, a good fellow, a storyteller, somebody's secretary, something in a distillery, a taxgatherer, a bankrupt and at present a praiser of his own past. - p243

It's obvious that Stephen is disappointed of his family. But there is more than that. What is exceptional here is the artist himself. He is the genius sort. He is the one who discerns the pain of the intellectual and emotional gulf which divides him from others. And being close to his own family, he feels it all the more acutely, thus expressing it as disgust, disengagement or indifference to the closest ones. On the other hand, it is not easy to be related to such a person beyond being awed by his talents, because there can be no true appreciation based on understanding, either. So the distrust goes both ways. Their only tie is love, or, in my own words, blood bonding, which can be comforting but not satisfying.

To me, it's a wonder that individuals are so different and diverse intelleactually. Consequently, however, they can only communicate with the like-minded. For the most intelligent, life is often a lonely journey. He couldn't find companionship in the family. He might not even find in the whole world.