This semi-autobiography depicts the story of a young Irish boy, Stephen Dedalus and his intellectual and religious-philosophical awakening to his social, familial constraints and his entry into a broader world. Being the oldest son of an impoverished father and a highly devout Catholic mother, he struggles to come to terms with his family, his nation, and his religion, and finally leaves his motherland to seek his identity. Infusing modernistic techniques of literature, especially the 'stream of consciousness' technique, the novel is loaded with themes like constraints and entrapment and their resultant outcomes like sense of independence and escape.