Irish Tales

Paper Summary:

Joyce and McCourt's respective novels, "Dubliners" and "Tis" are analyzed in terms of sex, love, and growing up. The writer points out Freudian influences on the characterizations in both novels, in terms of how the characters develop in the stories.The comparisons and contrasts between Joyce's short story "The Boarding House" and McCourt's own memoir "Tis" are stark and poignant. The paper discusses how both are tales of exploited adolescence, the young, smart decent man who resides within settings of egregious overlords, the plucking of the daughter's virginity under the watchful eyes and gossip of others, the presence of much alcohol and the wanting and temptation of flesh in a predominately Catholic households. The paper also looks at the striking similarities of the lives lead by both authors in two different centuries.

From the Paper:

"The Irish have a remarkable gift in the stories they tell. Only the Irish could incorporate charm and humor into tales about poverty and hunger and sex. Whether it's the 19th Century or the 20th, Irish authors can blend, wrapped and blanketed the emotional chaos of an individual's life, then weave a texture by the person's woes and triumphs that can be shared with others. It's fascinating to read James Joyce's Dubliners and Frank McCourt's "Tis" because both men shared very similar lives and experiences. One author has written fiction while the other wrote a memoir, yet both are embodiment of particular times and locales in the lives of both men. These writers, by the away, were raised as youths in two separate centuries, yet reared in similar Irish households and culture, sharing similar challenges of poverty, hunger, and alcoholism. Both men left Ireland shortly after their adolescent years; both had fathers who squandered what little the family possessed on alcohol; both books are stories of various peoples that both authors encountered on their travels; both taught children in schools to survive while they wrote; both novels strive to find redemption in the lives they had led; both are written sparsely yet the stories convey events as they had transpired, transporting the reader to a time, a place with a sense of thinking and conditioning inflicted upon the characters."

More papers on Irish Tales:

• Book Review # 101578 : "Old Irish Tale: "Mac Datho's Pig"
• Analytical Essay # 48813 : "Early Irish Literature"
• Research Paper # 5056 : "The Irish Political Structure"

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