shauna’s Reviews > A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man > Status Update

C2 reminds me a bit of Gatsby. Stephen feels a certain vague purposelessness in his youth, does not want to become like the older male figures in his life who seem to have wasted their lives and to be preoccupied with meaningless things. He strives to structure his life by various self-improvement means but fails. He ends up giving in to one of his base instincts, finding release by having sex with a prostitute.