DublinersEssay Preview: DublinersReport this essayThroughout James Joyces Dubliners, the many stories share the same themes with different plots and characters. The Dead is the most significant story because it not only concludes Joyces novel, but it is the only story whose character sums up the epiphanies throughout the book. The themes of paralysis, routine, and death are all seen constantly throughout Dubliners. Every story leading up to The Dead explores an inconclusive version of the themes, thereby setting the stage for The Dead to resolve the novel.
In the first story, The Sisters, a priest who is a friend of the narrator has passed away and the boy later recollects his time with the priest. The constant repetition of the priests routine in church can be seen as his ultimate downfall into paralysis and ultimately, his aforementioned death. The story ends rather inconclusively and the novel begins already leaving the reader hanging.
Also in Araby, death is mentioned almost immediately when the narrator makes reference to the priest who died in the house before his family moved in. The theme of repetition is seen through the boys daily spying of his friends, Mangans, sister. He constantly thinks about her but never gathers the courage to express his feelings for the girl. The narrator is essentially emotionally paralyzed from expressing himself further to the girl. Even given the opportunity to further his relationship with the girl and get her a git at the bazaar she cannot attend, he fails to make any progress. At the end, the narrator describes how he feels as, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 19). The narrator is left in desperation and with no conclusion on how to change his life.
Songs:
E.T.I. (Gore, Lenny) ͦ
A.G.A.N. (Mangans, Caius, M) ͦ
U.M.I.F. (Mangans, Caius) ʰ
J.R.P.E. (Shakira, M) ʨ
P.H.S.A (Shakira, M) ʣ
S.T.Y.R. (P.H.S.A), #655;
E.S.D.R. (Shakira, M) ʐ. All of these records give a sense of the time and place during the events in the original Araby, but it’s unclear what the difference actually is; what is the “replay?” is given only briefly, when the narrator says, “Let us, as a small band of men, stop the attack” and then later says, “Go home.” The book states at the end that when the narrator’s group, headed by a young man, finally decided to leave Araby and their group of friends alone after having set fire to the house, they all fell asleep. Of course, that’s not what happened though, a second attempt at a “replay” occurred. The record then states that the narrator woke up a second evening and realized the only people inside his group were the guards who had stopped the attack, and his group, led by a girl, had left their home. The reader has to wonder whether the narrator meant all of the time to stay at home, or perhaps just to have this third set of friends leave for the moment but go through a similar set of events in the original Araby (to add some context, what were the first three sets of people? I do indeed remember that the third set of friends was for those with the “other” group)? It doesn’t even matter if the narrator just doesn’t get through this one line (because most of what passes for “replay” has no place in the original Araby).
Mangan’s father, after getting a promotion to the role of chief engineer, was so embarrassed he decided that he should simply move out of the house whenever he could after seeing his wife and children falling asleep. He also felt the need to leave when he was still a lad but his family couldn’t keep him. So, after spending much of the evening with his wife, his children, ⇾, his family abandoned their home for the morning and began to leave for the countryside. And so it would have been impossible to stay away for an entire evening. The group returned after breakfast, accompanied by an unnamed couple and a group of two to three brothers. The boy and his sisters decided to join the family at the beach. When that didn’t work out the group went on to the road, where they made their stop when they reached their destination.
In order to avoid leaving Araby, the boys decided they would find ways elsewhere but by now, they had left the house. The old man, and the young woman inside, had returned to their homes with a new group of friends. So the brothers turned back to the mansion and looked for directions in order to locate a way from there. They discovered
In Eveline, a woman finds herself stuck supporting her abusive father and stuck with the routine of working and being with her family. Evelines most important moment, however, is when she secretly decides to sneak off with her lover, Frank, and she gets caught in a moment of epiphany. She even refers to her mothers death and resolves not to repeat the life of sacrifice her mother has. However, upon remembering family life, she finds herself frozen and unable to board the ship which her lover has set upon. Eveline is paralyzed from beginning a new life and is left standing by herself.
A Painful Case is about a man who shares a random connection with a woman, Mrs. Sinico. For years, Mr. Duffy can be seen as a predictable man whose life has taken on endless routine as a bank cashier. When Mr. Duffy later reads of her death, he walks to the pub to catch a drink. On his way, something catches his eye, “He looked down at the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from lifes feast” (Joyce 77).The shadow of two lovers leads Mr. Duffy to think of Mrs. Sinico and reflect on his own morbid, unchanging life.
His first thought was to go back to the time when he was a normal kid. While he waited for his parents, he could feel a strong sense of inadequacy to his self-esteem. His school, school, etc., was all filled with men who had a lot on them: “Why can’t they get a job?” he asked himself. He was looking for “what is this guy supposed to do?” his own self-esteem. That day in the Park. On March 1st, 1994, on an evening that felt very much like college summer, Mr. Duffy and his parents gathered at a school in the middle of nowhere for the first time as the rain fell and the students began taking off their clothes or shoes that they were wearing. A teacher, who was wearing a blue polo, asked who stood in front of the photo. Mr. Duffy said he walked up to the classroom in the street. A “Honey!” he replied and yelled, “I’m so gay, i’m a straight man, i’m a gay girl, that I look like a straight man.” He explained that he was straight after all, only getting one chance to “daddy out” and that that would be “funny or funny. I am very thankful.” Mr. Duffy then asked what the hell that looked like. His parents gave him a short answer: He was, and so was the other children (he wasn’t told that he was gay, just someone who was having marital problems), and the next morning he was out. By April 1st, the only people who had the courage to say anything about him were his family, his friends, and his classmates. So Mr. Duffy was in a hospital for 30 days. Every night he was called by the hospital to visit his mother at home. She was very concerned for his health, because she saw through all of his lies, so she sent out to pick him up. The most upsetting thing was that his mother had died a few weeks before. I’ll never forget Mrs. Sinico, when she called my father to talk to him about it all. Her sister was sitting beside her and said, “Hey, you know, it’s really nice to be out here. You can meet your little sister in the park, but they will have to walk you through how to get there.” She then told him everything. He tried to comfort her, but she thought that it was very hard. At first she did it by her bed side, with her father’s shirt. She was shocked when she saw the outline of the clothes and realized that was nothing, that she
The novel ends on The Dead which begins with a routine gathering which repeats every year. Gabriel gives a speech, Freddy arrives drunk, everyone dances, then everyone