Dubliners

‘Be careful what you wish for’, aptly describes what happens to Roderick in Rome, where the desire to see the great works of art result in the young artist experiencing “an indigestion of impressions; I must work them off before I go in for any more” (103). Accordingly, Roderick tells his patron he can no longer look at “other people’s works, for a month — not even at Nature’s own” (103), but instead he is driven to see his own creations. The time spent in the eternal city seems to both men like…

The narrator in the short story, “Araby” by James Joyce, resides not in a fantasy world full of dragons and wizards, but in a fantasy-like state of mind that is set on the theme of escape. Joyce describes North Richmond Street as, “... dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits…”(3); there is a reoccurring theme of darkness. The young narrator lives in this…

In the short stories, “Araby” by James Joyce and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, we are able to interpret and analyze the stories and find a common ground between the two, with authors use of Figurative language, themes, and symbols. Both stories explore the ideas of love, loss, reality, and the feeling of imprisonment through social norms. In the short “Araby” James Joyce transports us to North Richmond Street, a quiet dead-end Street in Dublin, where the narrator lives. The narrator…

“Counterparts,” the short story by James Joyce, Farrington is constantly unsatisfied with himself and the people around him. Farrington’s desire to escape from his frustration leads him to the public house, but there he only experiences an increase in anger because he sees everything as an obstacle in his path to comfort. Farrington is trapped in an endless cycle of anger because of his insecurity. To highlight Farrington’s entrapment, Joyce uses his reliance on drinking, his desire for status,…

The central idea of the short story, “Araby,” by James Joyce, is a young Irish boy who has a crush on his friends sister, who is considerably older than him, he goes to the market to get her some but eventually realizes that it’s not worth it. The author demonstrates this by writing, “But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce 2, Paragraph 5). This quote illustrates how the young Irish boy has a crush on this woman. There are many…

James Joyce's "Araby" is about an unnamed narrator who remembers the days of his youth and tells the story of his first love. North Richmond Street is where the narrator would grow up and develop feelings for one of his friend's sister, who is also an unnamed character in the story. The narrator explains how he would spend much of his time thinking about his crush, thinking about her in the most unlikely of times and places. One day, the narrator presses himself to talk to his lost interest,…

To best understand this, one must examine the text and Gabriel’s actions within it. Throughout “The Dead,” Gabriel works to live an admirable and generous life for those around him, striving to be personable, respected, and refined. However, occasionally, light shines through the cracks in his character. In his first interaction with Lily, when he asks her about possible wedding plans, she replies “with great bitterness.” Gabriel is caught off guard; his first response is to “reaffirm the…

Though the differences in James Joyce’s character Eveline and Joyce Oates character Connie may seem astonishing, it is really their similarities that may make these two seem like mirror images of each other. These two characters come from different countries and time yet they share a similar situation, age, and, dilemma. Starting off, neither of these stories are happy. The two protagonist Eveline and Connie both live a life of verbal and mental oppression by a single parental figure as for…

James Joyce’s stories are based in Dublin, Ireland and depict the troublesome and dark lives the Dubliners lived. His stories are based in the times where Dublin was under English/Roman Catholic rule and under their control, their duty was to serve the church under every circumstance. Joyce describes this as if they were paralysed by their supermacy in which he calls it “hemiplegia of the will”. His stories strongly depict the entrapment they felt and how they lived in an oppressive environment…

which was not lost on Joyce, and for which we must credit all that Joyce wrote. This essay focuses on the particular influence of Dante upon the writing of Joyce, narrowed specifically on the fifteen short-story collection Dubliners. In this short paper, the approach to Dubliners and the Commedia is from the literary perspective of New Criticism and from the philosophical lens of traditional Thomistic ethics as it informs the Modernist…