The emerging character of the exile and the writer in Joyce's Portrait

After a first section of James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," in which the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, is bullied in school and stands up for himself, becoming a hero among the boys, the second section moves Stephen into adolescence, and slowly and subtly he begins to edge away from his family. Parents and home were idealized in part one, as Dedalus is lonely and homesick while away in Clongawes boarding school, but in part 2 we see, from Stephen's point of view, the problems and discontents in the family: a strange section in which Stephen, still pretty young, accompanies his Uncle Charlie on errands to various stores in town (not totally clear what these errands are, debt collection? debt payments?), then we see the family in some kind of financial decline, moving from a suburb (Blackwater?) to Dublin, Dedalus feeling the gloomy atmosphere of disappointment in his father; then a trip with father to Cork, where father, Simon Dedalus, was raised, this trip to sell things at auction, probably more evidence of the financial distress, but Simon putting on a brave face, singing, taking Stephen on a tour of the college and getting sentimental about his old haunts, becoming teary about the death of many friends long gone from his life - Stephen behaving in typical adolescent fashion, slightly ashamed of Dad, sullen, but also very dependent and looking, hoping for something heroic in his father. We begin to see here the emerging character of the exile and the writer. Portrait is unique: very indistinct in some ways, as the overall arc of the narrative is seen as if through gauze or the haze of memory, and extraordinarily sharp in its specific, sensory details of place.