A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce is a novel of complex themes developed through frequent allusions to classical mythology. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus serves as a structuring element in the novel, uniting the central themes of rebellion and individual discovery, producing a literary work that illuminates an artist's motivations and the development of his individual philosophy. James Joyce chose the name Stephen Dedalus to connect his hero with the mythical Greek hero, Daedalus. In Greek myth, Daedalus was an architect, inventor, and craftsman. At the request of King Minos, Daedalus built a labyrinth in Crete to contain a monster called the Minotaur, half bull and half man. Subsequently, to displease the king, Daedalus and his son Icarus were both locked in this labyrinth, so complex that not even its creator could find the way out. Instead, Daedalus fashioned wings of wax and feathers so that he and his son could escape. When Icarus flew too high, too close to the sun, despite his father's warnings, his wings melted and he fell into the sea and drowned. His more cautious father flew to safety (World Book 3). By using this myth in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Portrait of the Artist), Joyce manages to give definitive treatment to an archetype that was well established long before the 20th century (Beebe 163). The myth of Daedalus provides a basic structure to the Portrait of the Artist. From the beginning, Stephen, like most young men, is trapped in a labyrinth, just as his namesake Daedalus was. Schools are a labyrinth of corridors; Dublin is a maze of streets. Stephen's mind itself is a twisted labyrinth full of dead ends and circular reasoning (Hackett 203): I met her today at point blank range on Grafton Street. The crowd brought us together. We both stopped. He asked me why I had never come, said he had heard all sorts of stories about me. This was just to buy time. He asked me: Was I writing poetry? Whose? I asked her. This confused her even more and I felt sorry and bad. I immediately closed that valve and opened the heroic-spiritual refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. (Joyce 246) Life poses puzzles at every turn. Stephen wanders the labyrinth searching his mind for answers (Gorman 204).