Pattern Of Paralysis In James Joyce's Dubliners

Under the circumstances of the fact that England was under oppression at the time, James Joyce wrote Dubliners in order to illustrate the sickness Ireland was suffering of, to point out its paralysis by means of the novel: “Impatient at the restrictions of life in Dublin, he concluded that Ireland was sick, and diagnosed its psychological malady as hemiplegia, a partial, unilateral paralysis” (Walzl, 1961, p. 221). Joyce envisioned Dublin as the image of complete paralysis so he decided to write about the disease that has been extended within the city as Florence L. Walzl (1961, p. 221) sets in “Pattern of Paralysis in Joyce`s Dubliners”: “When he had finished only the first story he stated, ‘I am writing a series of epicleti-ten-for a paper. . . . I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city’ ” and also as Anne …show more content…
Thus, the ordinary run of things in their lives led to three types of metaphorical deaths: physical, mental and spiritual. Joyce introduced them in order to display the deepening of the paralysis throughout the novel, from the first to the last short-story: “The figurative physical paralytic – death each experiences results from the choices each character makes in relation to love, humanity and marriage” (Melotti, 1975, p. 50). Although represented by particular moments and characters, the three allegorical types of death are all embodied in the main character of the last short-story “The Dead”: “Physical entrapment, mental stagnation, and spiritual emptiness occur on various levels and are represented by specific instances and characters in the story. But in the person of Gabriel Conroy, Joyce develops all three levels of figurative death” (Melotti, 1975, p. 129). Joyce characterizes Gabriel as a figure of disaster as a result of his inability to manage his decisions concerning love and