The setting of the story is one of the most crucial pieces of information for a story. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, its setting of Dublin, Ireland and many other places such as schools and homes, which are very descriptive and very visual. Joyce used many of the same points and places from the book that can be found in real life. Such actions at the time, in his writing style, were unheard of. Some analysis of the setting and different characters that Joyce uses in the book can be seen in real life. Some of the examples include the streets where Joyce's character Stephen met prostitutes. Many of the schools Stephen attended still exist today. Joyce specifically used real places that he himself lived in, to further show the true side of Ireland and the places he knew so well. Joyce also used the setting to his advantage, ensuring that the audience could imagine every discerning detail. His hope was to give a true picture of what it meant to grow up like him and experience all the things he had felt as he became the artist he was. The settings play an important role in the development of the individual plots of Stephen, his family, and the monumental actions of the characters. Stephen is the main character of Joyce's novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce used Stephen as a mirror image of himself to show exactly what and how events happened to him while growing up. For the main character, Stephen, the setting is the most important part of his development in the story. The setting offers the tools and challenges to move the story forward or to try to keep it from progressing beyond the block. The setting is the first literary tool that Joyce uses to begin to develop Steph... middle of paper... of course he constantly felt the presence of the English in Ireland's major city" (Farrell). Critics also agree that real life problems can be felt in the story. In conclusion, real settings and problems affected both the family as a whole and Stephen as an individual character was affected by the poor Irish economy, the back streets of Dublin and the ever-present sentiment of the English government Stephen was personally affected by early school leaving, old-fashioned corporal punishment and a second home in the back streets The final analysis is that the use of real settings and problems caused a. emotion connection between Joyce's life and a reader's life It also makes the characters truly represent what happened in Joyce's life that led him to become a writer. Stephen's journey to becoming an artist is Joyce's life with fewer details.