Escaping an Ever Pressuring Society

1640 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of james joyce the dead

Escaping an Ever Pressuring Society

James Joyce author of Dubliners, is a book which examines the everyday life of people who live in Dublin. In this intimate portrayal of Dubliners, Joyce writes short stories about the individuals in Irish society. In Dubliners many characters feel the pressure of society, and show their desires to escape. In the stories “Eveline”, “Counterparts” and “The Dead”, the themes of individuals v. society and journey through escape are present. In each story there is a powerful person present that controls a particular person or situation. In Dublin jobs are very important, since they control the social standing in their society. Dublin itself is a major issue to the characters in Dubliners; they wrestle with the ideas of being able to escape.

In the story “Eveline”, a young woman gets the chance to escape from her hard life in Dublin, when a young man named Frank sweeps her off her feet and has plans to move to Buenos Ayres. In “Counterparts”, a man is faced with the unbearable aspects of his life, when he gets scolded by his boss, humiliated at the pub and when the pressure it too much he takes it out on his son and beats him. “The Dead” is a story about the realization that even though a couple might be together, they might not necessarily know everything about their significant other. Gabriel gets hit with a realization when he comes to find out that his wife was in love with another man at a young age, and the information is almost disheartening to Gabriel when he hears it.

In each of the stories there is a dominant person in their lives. Eveline a young woman struggles with having the responsibility of having to take care of her father a...

... middle of paper ...

...he story is very symbolic to the coldness that is now shared between the couple and the whole town of Dublin, “his soul swooned slowly as he heard the now falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (225).

James Joyce has pointed out many thoughts throughout writing Dubliners. The theme of journeys and escape are present in everyday life living in Dublin, and show how people are unhappy in their current lives and strive to escape through other activities. Reading Joyce he includes many themes that tie into the daily routine of Dubliners. Many references to fire vividly illustrate the point that they live life in a hell. Dubliners is a creative portrayal of individual people living in Dublin, all the while not giving too many facts surrounding a character or story.

Show More
Related

  • James Joyce's Dubliners Analysis

    1239 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Dubliners” by James Joyce was first published in 1914. It is a collection of short stories, which takes place in the same general area and time frame, moving from one individual’s story to the next. Boysen in “The Necropolis of Love: James Joyce’s Dubliners” discuses the way the citizens of Dublin are caught in this never ending misery because of the lack of love- mainly instituted by the “criminalization of sensual love” from the church- and the economic stress, and struggle to survive. Zack Brown goes through the individual short stories, pointing out their references to paralysis, as well as a few other themes in “Joyce’s Prophylactic Paralysis: Exposure in “Dubliners.”” “James Joyce’s usage of Diction in Representation of Irish Society in Dubliners” by Daronkolaee discuses the background knowledge of the culture and particular details of the city that enhance the understanding of the reader and enforce the ideas presented by Boysen and broken down by Brown. These analytical articles help support the idea that Joyce uses

    Read More

  • A Feminist Study of "The Dead"

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    The female characters are from various social classes and each of them has her own attitudes towards life and love. Lily, the caretaker's daughter is the first character to be introduced to us. In the story she is a representative from the labouring class. Comparily, Gabriel is a well-educated young man who seems to have a bright future. When he arrogantly greets her, "I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?" (Joyce 123). The girl answers bitterly "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (124). Then Gabriel "color" as if he has made a mistake when Lily becomes upset about the subject of men. This is because he never expects his self-conceited good intention will hurt her feelings so much. Instead of comforting Lily, he "without looking at her", kicks off his goloshes and flicks actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes. From this we can see he first chooes to avoid difficulty when the conflict between he and the ...

    Read More

  • The Sniper

    949 Words  | 2 Pages

    The setting of the story, Dublin, has been written in such a way that only highly negative images are conveyed to portray evil. From the beginning to the end, Dublin is seen as an insecure, fearful, and vulnerable town abundant with weapons of war and associated horror. ¡§Dublin lay enveloped in darkness¡¨ instantly transmits a sense of mystery, weariness and fear. This negative image is strengthened by ¡§Around the beleaguered Four Courts the heavy guns roared. Here and there through the city machine guns and rifles broke the silence of the night, spasmodically like dogs barking on lone farm.¡¨ Dublin can be almost compared to a person, who has struggled under stress and is now defeated. The city is empty, apart from the roar of ¡§machine guns and rifles¡¨ which have converted the city not a place of misery and ba...

    Read More

  • Desire of Escape

    945 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Dubliners, James Joyce tells short stories of individuals struggling with life, in the city of Dublin. “It is a long road that has no turning” (Irish Proverb). Many individuals fight the battle and continue on the road. However, some give up and get left behind. Those who continue to fight the battle, often deal with constant struggle and suffering. A reoccurring theme, in which Joyce places strong emphasis on, is the constant struggle of fulfilling responsibilities. These responsibilities include; work, family and social expectations. Joyce writes about these themes because characters often feel trapped and yearn to escape from these responsibilities. In “The Little Cloud”, “Counterparts”, and “The Dead” characters are often trapped in unhappy living situations, often leading to a desire of escape from reality and daily responsibilities.

    Read More

  • Search for Meaning in James Joyce's Dubliners

    2387 Words  | 5 Pages

    Search for Meaning in James Joyce's Dubliners Throughout Dubliners James Joyce deliberately effaces the traditional markers of the short story: causality, closure, etc. In doing so, "the novel continually offers up texts which mark their own complexity by highlighting the very thing which traditional realism seeks to conceal: the artifice and insufficiency inherent in a writer's attempt to represent reality.(Seidel 31)" By refusing to take a reductive approach towards the world(s) he presents on the page - to offer up "meaning" or "ending" - Joyce moves the reader into complex and unsettling epistemological and ontological realms. Meaning is no longer unitary and prescriptive, the author will not reveal (read impose) what the story "means" at its close and therefore we can't definitively "know" anything about it. Instead, meaning, like modernism, engenders its own multiplicity in Joyce's works, diffuses into something necessarily plural: meanings. An ontological crisis is inextricable from this crisis of meaning and representation.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Araby and The Garden Party

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    The theme of light and darkness is apparent throughout Joyce's poetry. The dark, sombre setting of the story creates a sense of hopelessness within the narrator, an unnamed young boy. The negative connotations associated with the city of Dublin are used to illustrate the narrator's state of hopelessness. It is only through his illusions that he is able to catch a glimpse of light amidst the darkness. The introduction of Joyce's Araby immediately creates a dark, mundane setting for the story.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Living Dead in James Joyce's The Dead and Dubliners

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the taxi ride from his aunts' party to their hotel, Gabriel reminisces about his and Gretta's lives together.  Joyce enforces the passion of Gabriel's thoughts, "Moments of their secret life together burst like stars on his memory" (Joyce 173).  Joyce continues to fill his readers thoughts with examples of the Conroy's wonderful life: "He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his proud of her grace and wifely carriage... after the kindling again of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and strange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust" (Joyce 175).  Gabriel seizes Gretta in a passionate embrace and inquires into her thoughts.  Gretta hesitates at first then proceeds to explain the tragic tale...

    Read More

  • Religion In James Joyce's Dubliners

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.

    Read More

  • Interpretive Questions for Araby by James Joyce

    1043 Words  | 3 Pages

    1. Joyce is not subtle in describing the setting as desolate and the adults as cold. There is a lifelessness that surrounds the boy: “musty…. waste littered… somber houses… cold…. … silent street… dark muddy lanes.” Adults are ghosts: “the boys are surrounded by “shades of people” whose houses “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” Joyce evokes an image of the Irish soul as cold and the street as uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified and more alive than its residents.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Araby And The Dead By James Joyce

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    James Joyce began his writing career in 1914 with a series of realistic stories published in a collection called The Dubliners. These short literary pieces are a glimpse into the ‘paralysis’ that those who lived in the turn of the century Ireland and its capital experienced at various points in life (Greenblatt, 2277). Two of the selections, “Araby” and “The Dead” are examples of Joyce’s ability to tell a story with precise details while remaining a detached third person narrator. “Araby” is centered on the main character experiencing an epiphany while “The Dead” is Joyce’s experiment with trying to remain objective. One might assume Joyce had trouble with objectivity when it concerned the setting of Ireland because Dublin would prove to be his only topic. According the editors of the Norton Anthology of Literature, “No writer has ever been more soaked in Dublin, its atmosphere, its history, its topography. He devised ways of expanding his account of the Irish capital, however, so that they became microcosms of human history, geography, and experience.” (Greenblatt, 2277) In both “Araby” and “The Dead” the climax reveals an epiphany of sorts that the main characters experience and each realize his actual position in life and its ultimate permanency.

    Read More

  • Eveline´s Decision in Eveline by James Joyce

    341 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the short story “Eveline “ by James Joyce, Eveline, the protagonist is given the opportunity to escape from her hard unendurable life at home and live a life of true happiness at Buenos Ayres with Frank, her lover. Throughout the story, Eveline is faced with a few good memories of her past from her childhood and her mother, but she also faces the horrible flashbacks of her mother’s illness and her father’s violence. In the end, she does not leave with Frank, Eveline’s indecisiveness and the burden of her family’s duties makes her stay.

    Read More

  • The Theme of Escape in James Joyce’s Dubliners

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    In James Joyce’s Dubliners, the theme of escape tends to be a trend when characters are faced with critical decisions. Joyce’s novel presents a bleak and dark view of Ireland; his intentions by writing this novel are to illustrate people’s reasons to flee Ireland. In the stories “Eveline, “Counterparts”, and the “Dead”, characters are faced with autonomous decisions that shape their lives. This forlorn world casts a gloomy shadow over the characters of these stories. These stories are connected by their similar portrayal of Ireland. They clearly represent Joyce’s views on people’s discontent with Ireland.

    Read More

  • Two Themes in James Joyce's Dubliners

    1176 Words  | 3 Pages

    Escape Countered by Responsibility: A Comparative Analysis of the Two Themes in Dubliners. James Joyce’s Dubliners is a compilation of many short stories put together to convey the problems in Ireland during that time. Many of his characters are searching for some kind of escape from Dublin, and this is a recurring theme throughout the stories. In the story “Little Cloud,” the main character, Little Chandler, feels the need for both an escape from Dublin and also from his normal everyday life. Gabriel, the main character in Joyce’s final story of the book, “The Dead,” desires a different form of escape than Little Chandler.

    Read More

  • Cruelty In Araby By James Joyce

    2241 Words  | 5 Pages

    the setting plays a huge role in portraying the mood of the story and shows the mood of Ireland and the boy. James Joyce has such vivid descriptions when making the setting of the story due to the fact that he grew up in Ireland on North Richmond Street where the majority of the story takes place. North Richmond Street, which Joyce describes by writing that ?North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers? School set the boys free.?3 The layout that Joyce describes ?? consists of a row of houses on either side, forming a rectangle, so that the vacant house at the end ?? detached from its neighbors in a square ground,? serves as the removed portion of a gnomonic parallelogram whose flawed remainder will be the setting of the story.?4 In the story Joyce describes the street as ?brown? which can be seen as the color of decay.5 In the boy?s house he finds a room in which the previous tenant, a priest, left many yellowing books that the boy would read in his spare time. The fact that he describes the books as yellowing can be as another color for decay.

    Read More

  • The Modern Relevance of Themes in James Joyce's Eveline

    927 Words  | 2 Pages

    James Joyce is widely considered to be one of the best authors of the 20th century. One of James Joyce’s most celebrated short stories is “Eveline.” This short story explores the theme of order and hazard and takes a critical look at life in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. Furthermore, the themes that underlie “Eveline” were not only relevant for the time the story was wrote in, but are just as relevant today.

    Read More

More about Escaping an Ever Pressuring Society

Open Document