Paper Summary:

The paper examines how Joyce's writing about Dublin in "The Dubliners" reflects the moral, intellectual and spiritual paralysis he saw in Irish society. The paper examines several stories such as "The Sisters," "Eveline," "After the Race" and "An Encounter" in order to illustrate how these stories are a manifestation of Joyce's ambivalent feelings toward his origins. The paper points out, however, that Joyce is not entirely hopeless in his view of the people of Dublin and thus of the world. The paper shows how he believes that some will be able to find a way to escape from the paralysis of society.

From the Paper:

"The Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce, written and arranged in away that creates a meta-narrative about life in the city of Dublin and that expresses Joyce's ambivalence toward the city where he was raised. One of the primary themes in these stories is paralysis, for Joyce sees Ireland as a whole as if it were locked into a time and place that is different from that experienced by the rest of the world. The stories are arranged from childhood to old age and beyond, always showing how the people are tied to the religious conflict between Catholic and Protestant and to the clash between each in the early part of the Twentieth Century."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Bantam, 1990.
• Peake, C.H. James Joyce: The Citizen and the Artist. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1977.
• Tindall, William York. A Reader's Guide to James Joyce. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1959.
• Torchiana, Donald T. Backgrounds for Joyce's Dubliners. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.
• Werner, Craig Hansen. Dubliners: A Pluralistic World. Boston: Twayne, 1988.

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