Paralysis In James Joyce's Dubliners

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Recommended: Themes In James Joyce'S Short Story “Dubliners”

Dubliners by James Joyce is a novel with a collection of short stories. A mutual theme establish throughout Dubliners is the feeling of paralysis that is felt by the characters in the stories. It is not hard to detect the idea of paralysis after reading Dubliners but can easily be overlooked. Therefore, the idea of paralysis is a common theme. In most of the stories in Dubliners, such as “The Sisters”, “Araby”, “Eveline”, and “The Dead” a character has a want, but has difficulties to overcome. Yet, would eventually yield and not pursue his/her aspiration. The events of paralysis demonstration the characters’ incompetence to change their own lives. They have the chance or opportunity to change their lives, but freeze up when push comes to shove.
“The Sisters” is the first story in Dubliners and is about a priest who died. Father Flynn was friends with a young lad. Also, Father Flynn had two sisters giving the story its title. The world paralysis even in italics is mentioned in the first paragraph of “The Sisters”. Therefore, Joyce not only mentioning paralysis in the first paragraph, but making it italics. Should give the reader an indication of how important paralysis is going to be not only in “The Sisters” but throughout the entire novel. “The first story of the Dubliners collection, “The Sisters”, opens the Dubliners sequence and explicitly introduces the topic of paralysis, one of Joyce’s major concerns” (Walter 3). However, like before it is easy to miss this important detail or to go as far as to miss understanding the context of paralysis. “Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis” (Joyce 3). The explanation for this possible misunderstanding is that the character wh...

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...out “Eveline”. Eveline is once more torn between doubts and hopes, fear and joy. She thinks about the possible disappointment of Frank and asks herself if she could still draw back after all he had done for her. She is paralyzed and afraid of the oncoming. The final example “The Dead”, he precisely discusses that he dislikes his country and is tired of it. It seems that someone who dislikes his own country would leave and go elsewhere. However, Gabriel does not leave instead he remains numb and paralyzed. This is the paralytic mind of the people of Dublin. They are stuck in their old ways and they cannot change from them because they are too scared of change. All the short stories in Dubliners, can be seen as a collection to a novel itself because it has a general theme for all of its characters regardless of age or gender and that one theme is paralysis.

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