Dubliners
In the story Dubliners by James Joyce, he writes about a few different themes, some of these being autonomy, responsibility, light, and dark. The most important of the themes though must be the individual character in the story against the community and the way they see it. I have chosen to take a closer look at “Araby,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” because the great display of these themes I feel is fascinating. Many things affect the way the individual characters see the community, for example their family, friends, fellow citizens, or even new places. In Dubliners, the way the characters see the community affects them and other people around them.
In the story “Araby,” the boy has a negative view of the community. Many aspects of his life affect the way he sees the things around him. For example, because of his uncle, he is unable to reach the bazaar in time. This makes him angry and frustrated. Although the boy reminds his uncle about the bazaar, his uncle forgets and comes home very late and the boy says to himself, “I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten (25).” He teases the boy and tells him not to go, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” meaning working too hard with no fun makes you a boring person. Because all the boy’s desires are focused on his goal of getting the gift at the bazaar, he becomes frustrated. The boys’ uncle is one of the people the boy is around all the time; this frustration causes him to become very jittery and get irritated with the world around him. By things like the clock ticking it gradually drove him to just have to totally change his train of thought and just dwell on the girl and the boy thinks, “...
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...ion of the community for a few reasons. Gabriel’s wife Gretta affected Gabriel tremendously throughout the story. For example when Gretta told Gabriel about her former lover Michael Furrey, Gabriel thought in his head, “A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins” (pg 220). The frustration that grew out of him finding out that Gretta never really truly loved him and Michael Furrey, Gabriel was getting emotional, “Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes” and “His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling” (pg 224-225). Gabriel’s view of the community by the end of the story just by Gretta was tremendously changed. Gabriel saw the world winding down into a dark world.
In the article "College is a Waste of Time and Money", Caroline Bird explains why higher education may not be the best choice for high school graduates. Bird writes that students do not attend college because they want to, but because of what others expect. College is merely the trend in today's society. It is an escape from the real world. Students may be shuffled into a system that is neither financially nor academically beneficial.
“Araby” tells the story of a young boy who romanticizes over his friend’s older sister. He spends a lot of time admiring the girl from a distance. When the girl finally talks to him, she reveals she cannot go to the bazaar taking place that weekend, he sees it as a chance to impress her. He tells her that he is going and will buy her something. The boy becomes overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform this chivalrous act for her, surely allowing him to win the affections of the girl. The night of the bazaar, he is forced to wait for his drunken uncle to return home to give him money to go. Unfortunately, this causes the boy to arrive at the bazaar as it is closing. Of the stalls that remained open, he visited one where the owner, and English woman, “seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty” (Joyce 89) and he knows he will not be able to buy anything for her. He decides to just go home, realizing he is “a creature driven and derided with vanity” (Joyce 90). He is angry with himself and embarrassed as he...
The article “Live and Learn” written by Louis Menand presents three different purposes of college. The first theory states that college is used as a sorting system to pick out the most intelligent students and use their potential. The second theory revolves around the idea that students are too focused on college and grades to the point where they lose their desire to learn and solely focus on the reward they believe college will bring them. Finally, the third theory is for students who want a vocational education due to the demand for specialized knowledge in our advancing economy. Despite how deeply this article explores these three theories, inconsistencies still exists within said theories. There are also many aspects of education that
In “College Is a Waste of Time and Money,” Caroline Bird, a college lecturer makes very good and valid points that college is wasting time and money. She describes how society has pushed students into getting higher education right out of high school. Leaving us with the question, are students getting a higher degree of education to better their future or to keep them busy and paying an institution.
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
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.
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.
In the article “College Is a Waste of Time and Money” by Caroline Bird, its main idea is to really convince people to take a second look into what they are getting into when deciding to go to college. It also argues that there has to be other ways than just college to students prepared for the “real world”. College is not what it is made up to be. While in some ways, benefits outweigh the negatives. This article strictly discusses why college is basically the new high school diploma and how it is not the best thing to do. Students feel like this is the only option and what they think doesn’t matter. I can relate to this statement because during my first years of college, I didn’t accomplish anything and I struggle with the previous ignorance today.
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.
“Intelligence is, first and foremost, a judgment” (11) Do we really know what intelligence is? Is it something we are born with, or is it something we have to achieve? The dictionary defines intelligence as the capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms; aptitude in grasping truth, relations, facts, meanings, and etc (7). A study of intelligence provides two theories of how intelligence works. One theory is “that there is a single factor of intelligence that determines the level of ability that we have in any task each individual might have a G factor, a general intelligence factor, which would make people better at tasks that are apparently unrelated and likely demand very different cognitive abilities” (11). The second theory stipulates that “intelligence is divided in distinct categories; people would have specific ease with tasks of a particular domain and there would be no single factor explaining performance across different domains of intelligence” (11). So why are standardized tests, such as the ACT and SAT, measure something that little is known about? These tests are huge factors of high school, but are the tests a good measure of intelligence? Because of the many problems and variables, research shows that standardized tests do not accurately measure intelligence.
...ollege is a waste of money, or it can be seen at as a stimulating and moving phase in one’s life. This phase can set the guide for the rest of one’s life. Students will think it is best to attend college, that college is a waste of time and money. They may also think that the idea of having an education is essential for success in this society. Education is about growth and knowledge, it is not only about whether it is a waste of time and money.
According to Michael Begnal “Gabriel will reveal, without perhaps knowing it, the extent of his paralysis and alienation as he attempts to deal with Gretta after the party” (Begnal). Once the couple leaves the party, Gabriel is overwhelmed by his emotions for his wife and would like nothing more than to take her home and be alone with her. However, once the couple finally makes it home, Gretta tells her husband about the story of her first love, Micheal Furey, who died in the cold waiting for her. While Gretta is telling Gabriel of her lost love, Gabriel feels that he is “a ludicrous figure” and that he believes “some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him” (Joyce). Gabriel even states that his wife’s “eyes made him feel awkward” (2308). He has become alienated from his wife because of her past lover. At this point Gabriel is “totally unable to empathize with her feelings”(Begnal). Gabriel is once again isolated mental and physical by the person whom he held most closely. Not only is Gabriel unable to understand her, he is unable to “reach outside of his own consciousness, since he is immersed in his own solipsistic world” (Begnal). He can’t seem to figure out that he is alienated from his wife Gretta, until the end where he is enlighten by his own realization. Gabriel never knew about Gretta’s young love until she brought it up. This demonstrates
Paper books are ubiquitous, and there’s have a good reason for this: they have existed for centuries. Until the very concept of eReaders existed, there was no other option for modern reading material. Everyone knows what a paper book is. Additionally, many know how paper books are suffering because of the introduction of eReaders:. “Meanwhile, printed books declined 34 percent and 16 percent in those respective areas, with gentler, single-digit drops for education and religious titles.” (Engadget). It has been observed that every genre of books is suffering with the addition of electronic books to the market. It is a mystery whether or not paper books will be able to stay afloat.
However, iIn spite of the current pre-eminence of e-books, it may be argued that they are not likely to replace print books anytime soon or possibly at all. Both formats have their advantages and drawbacks, which makes for one of them difficult to replace the other. Moreover, they serve differents needs and purposes. E-books are famous for their portability. Hundreds of e-books can be stored on a single device. Thus e-books don’t take shelving space and are convenient to take on travel, while even a few paper books are bulky and quite heavy to carry around. Numerous e-books are in open access, while paper books are not routinely available free of charge. E-books may be acquired and accessed immediately online, a feature I enjoy especially and treasure most: many a time I was able to buy and read an e-book at home within minutes of learning of its existence. Needless to say, e-books are considerably easier to cite and quote than print books, since the copy-paste feature spares us the trouble of retyping the quoted text. Another important advantage of digital books is their specialized software, which makes reading much easier: search and reference tools, changeable font size and day/night mode, dictionaries. Last but not least, e-books conserv...
When people read from a book they like turning the pages and feeling the weight of the book on their hands. People also like that books are ready for you to read the second you pick them up. A down side to having physical books though is they can take up a lot of space. If you have a bunch of books you want to read on a trip it may take up a lot of space in the bags you are bringing. One big reason people like to read with books is because they are easy to use. All you have to do to read the book is open it up and start reading that’s all.