Dubliners

Before talking about Dubliners I am going to introduce its creator, James Joyce. Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, born in 1882 to a lower-class family from Dublin, and considered to be one of the most influential writers on the modernist period of the early 20th century. Although he spent the most part of his adult life abroad his literary world is settled on his native Dublin, the city that provides him of the characters, places, atmosphere etc. This last characteristic is well reflected in Dubliners, which is a collection of 15 short stories all settled on the city of Dublin and published in 1914. The stories were written in a very realistic way because they tried to reflect the situation of paralysis Dublin was living caused by the Irish nationalism, just at its peak. The negative experiences that Joyce passed during his youth at this city are also reflected in some way in these pieces that is way they have some autobiographic parts. Some of the stories are referred to the infancy, others to the adult age but they all have one thing in common; the eagerness of telling the truth about what he saw and heard, a truth he would never deformed or changed. What I mean with this is that Joyce only state information, he lived our imagination work. Dubliners stories have always created a big deal; are they all independent short stories, I mean, they only have in common Dublin’s atmosphere at that time or are they related to each other, is there a double purpose apart from the obvious, are they full of symbolism, could they be consider as novels' To answer this question you cannot read the stories without paying attention or start Reading them having the idea of; “they only tell things, only state”, you have to go deep in them, realize what Joyce wants to tell to you and discover the literary figures that he hides. It can seem a hard task but it isn’t if you really like them, this difficulty is the charm of the work. I do not consider Dubliners as a group of short stories because I do really think there’s a great connection between the fifteen of them. It is true that the structured the novel has coincide with the stages of human life but Joyce did not wrote it as separate stories, indeed he declared that Dubliners had to be read as a novel that showed us a city’s development. He is able to accomplish this through the use of many different literary themes, which are used to show the humanity of the Irish people. James Joyce became the pioneer of a literary figure that would make him years later the pioneer on its use. This figure is the epiphany which consisted on a reflexion where a character has a special moment of self-understanding or illumination. Later on the epiphany would become on one or even the most important aspect of the short stories. An example of epiphany we find it at the end of The Dead when Gabriel’s revelation explain us the connection between the dead and the living. We also find another important element during the stories, and it is the paralysis. In most of the pieces one of the main characters has a desire, faces obstacles to it and then ultimately relents and suddenly stops all action. These moments of paralysis show the characters inability to change their lives and routines that make difficult their wishes. The story Eveline, shows how she, Eveline, freezes like an animal, fearing the possible new experience of life away from home. Epiphanies and paralysis are not the only things that Dubliners stories share; we can also find a great connection between the characters and their desire of escape. Through their everyday experiences, the characters have to deal with many situations that deal with their responsibilities to society and feelings of self sufficiency. This theme is especially evident in the stories like The Dead were Greta wishes to escape from the thoughts of a past love, or also at The Boarding House were Doran desires to escape marrying Polly although he knows he must do it but he could not handle the responsibility of being involved in an affair. Both characters of both novels feel the same: desire of escaping from their current lives and situations. Religion also plays a very important role during all the stories. As we read each tale we realize that the presence of priests, spiritual experiences and religious belief is not sheer chance. The first reference to religion we find ah the first story, The Sisters were religion’s is shown as a incompetent and dangerous thing at that time of Dublin life. I have not read every short story from Dubliners but I have search in Internet for other religious examples, and I have found that in Grace, An Encounter and Araby the presence of religion is evident. We cannot forget talking about the grate connection between life and death that we can see from the first story, The Sisters, to the last one, The Dead. The first one, were a priest, who has befriended a small boy, has just passed away, starts remembering the death while the last one finishes “invoking the quiet calm of snow that covers both the dead and the living” when a woman recounts to her husband the story of a man who died for her love. The theme of Death is present in many of the stories were memories of the dead color every action, for example at The Dead or Eveline. In other tale as for example The Sisters, the narrator does not know how to feel upon the priest death. To finish off, I am going to give you the last argument that make me think Dubliners has to be consider as a novel not as a collection of 15 short stories with any connection between them. Well, the last thing I want to mention is the perpetually darkness of Dublin during every tale. You cannot appreciate any ray of sunlight or illuminate things and this is because Joyce colored Dublin atmosphere with dark colors with the help of dirty streets full of litter and dusk. In conclusion, James Joyce is a great writer who achieved his fame thanks to his great work and capacity of creating new novel styles such as Dubliners.