Fly Like An Eagle
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I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till Im free
Fly through the revolution
-Steve Miller Band
From the dawn of man, one of his greatest desires has been to fly. To take to the skies and soar, free-wheeling with the birds in an aerial adventure. Man has gone to great lengths to achieve this dream. It is why we built planes and even roller coasters in a futile attempt to reach the heavens. Hundreds, if not thousands, of artistic works have been created dealing with flying. But why is this so? Why is flight such an enchantress for us? What is it about the azure sky that tempts us so? To answer this, one has to realize what it means to fly. To truly take wing is to be free. It is to shed the chains and burdens of the world and, even for just a moment, to rise up, free. It is only when we are unbound from our limitations and venture beyond them that we can truly define our lives and our existence.
In the myth of Icarus, this dream of mankind is literal. Icarus and his father, Daedalus, are imprisoned on an island. In order to escape, Daedalus, an inventor, crafts wings for the two to wear. Girded with these wings, Icarus and his father fly from their prison to freedom. His father warns him not to fly too close the sun, lest the heat melt the wax that holds his wings together. While there escape begins well, Icarus fails to heed his fathers warning and flies too close the sun. Without his wings, Icarus plummets into the sea. His father, alone now, continues flying to safety.
Stephen Dedalus of James Joyces novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man also desires to be free. He wants to express himself uninhibited and to acclaim his destiny. However, to do this he must break the chains of bondage that he feels hold him back. When discussing man, he says:
The soul is bornIt has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born is this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.
For the soul to be born–for the person to develop and express himself–he must break through the nets, or boundaries, that others have placed upon him. Stephen feels that to live his life freely, he must escape from the constraints society has placed on him. In this sense he becomes like Icarus and Daedalus. Just as they were imprisoned by the king, Stephen feels unjustly caged by his country. He feels tied down by the social conventions that his family, his religion, and his country have demanded of him as well as what his peer group considers the norm. He is looking for meaning in his life and feels he cannot accomplish this until he throws off the chains that keep him down.
As Stephen grows, he finds the need to express himself more and more. He begins to find different mediums to do that, and although they are satisfactory a first, he realizes that instead of freeing him, these outlets only serve to trap him further. At first he considers his family to be warm and perfect, and attempts to model himself after them. He attends the same school as his father and believes he is headed down the same path. But he quickly learns that his home is not as harmonious as he had thought. He receives conflicting messages from his parents, with his mother telling him to always be good and honest, while his father tells him never to squeal on a classmate and to try and make many friends for later in life. Also he experiences the verbal battle between Dante and Mr. Casey one Christmas and realizes that his family and loved ones are not the path to self-expression. His rejection of them is clear in his thoughts while spending time with his father. “His mind seemed older than theirsNo life or youth stirred in him as it had stirred in themNothing stirred in his soulHis childhood was dead or lost.”
Another outlet Stephen attempts to find meaning in is that of religion. After a “fire and brimstone” speech by his priest, Stephen decides that h will find meaning in his religion, and he goes on a quest to become a model Christian. He gives up all the sins he had been committing and repents. As he prays “his eyes were dimmed with tears and, looking humbly up to heaven, he wept for the innocence he had lost.” He goes to confession all the time. He even goes so far as to not even meet the eyes of women lest they tempt him. However, he cannot find peace in his religion. He cannot understand how his faith would require him to remove even the minutest of imperfections from his being. In the end he rejects religion as well as a blind faith and superstition. Frustrated, he continues searching for his destiny. We can imagine the inventor Deadalus struggling to perfect his wings, to give them form and strength. Like Daedalus, Stephen, in his trials, is seeking his mission in life–seeking to be free.
And just as inspiration must have struck the inventor on a bright, sunny morning, so too destiny reaches out and embraces Stephen.
Now, at the name of the fabulous artificer, he seemed to hear the noise of dim waves and to see a winged