Abstract
This question—why teach A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to high school students—asks many things.¹ Taken one way, the question asks why we should teach the novel to high school students as opposed to keeping books by notoriously difficult authors (whose works require a good deal of scaffolding) safely ensconced in college-level English courses, especially in classes that students actively choose, as opposed to the required-for- every- student high school English class. The question also refers to the choice of what texts end up in the curriculum: Why teach Portrait and not another novel—a