The Importance Of Decision-Making In James Joyce's Dubliners

Decision-making can be a hard thing. In the book the Dubliners, the characters have to make different choices. In Joyce’s story Eveline, the main character Eveline was faced with having to choose between running away and staying. Also, Mr. Kernan, from the story Grace, choosing between going to church and not. In the story The Boarding House, characters are faced with multiple life changing choices. These characters have different routes they can take and once they make their decision their true nature is established. The theme of The Boarding House is that the characters do not really make their own decisions rather they chose to wait to make the hard decisions until the choice is no longer theirs to make.

In the beginning of the story, The Boarding House, it describes Mrs. Mooney’s relationship with her husband. After Mrs. Mooney’s father died, her husband, Mr. Mooney became a drunk, bad businessman, and “began to go to the devil” (Joyce 61). The two fought constantly, even in front of customers. It

wasn’t until he came at Mrs. Mooney with a clever that did she took action about her failing marriage and separated from Mr. Mooney. Mrs. Mooney also waited to take action towards her daughter’s flirtatious spirit, even when she had an affair with a man. It wasn’t until her daughter, Polly, and the young man, Bob Doran, who she had the affair with, began to act strange. Bob Doran, waited to make his decision to marry Polly until Mrs. Mooney confronted him about the affair.
I think that sometimes decision-making can be delayed because there is only one choice that could be made. For Mr. Doran, though he did wrestle with different choices, in his heart he knew that his one choice was to marry Polly because of his convictions. However, delaying choices can lessen options, therefore making letting fate decide your future rather than taking risks. Mrs. Mooney refused to take action towards her daughter’s flirtatious spirit, giving Polly only two real options which were to marry Bob Doran or have a ruined reputation. Polly had little choice in the matter, after she made the choice of having an affair; her reputation was ruined so her only option if she ever wanted to marry was to marry Mr. Doran.
When Mr. Doran finally made is a decision on how he was going to act upon his previous actions, his true nature was revealed to the reader. In his mind, Bob Doran entertained the thought of not marrying Polly; he felt an “instinct of the celibate warned him to hold back.” (Joyce). However, he also felt conviction about his mistake and that “his sense of honour told him that reparation must be made for such a sin” (Joyce). As he wrestled with his two conflicting thoughts, it wasn’t until Mrs. Mooney talked to him that he made his decision to marry Polly. This decision revealed that Mr. Doran was an honorable man and not a coward that runs away from his mistakes. It also shows his desire to be in good social standing. If Mr. Doran refused to marry her, his reputation would be ruined, and every on would know because “Dublin is such a small city; everyone knows everyone else’s business” (Joyce). He thought if he didn’t marry her he would, at the very least, lose his job because of his employer’s moral standards. Bob Doran was powerless in making the decision because of societies’ opinion of him would ruin his career. He was paralyzed because of his previous mistake and his life choices were limited.
Mr.

Doran not only cared about how other people thought of him, he also cared about what he thought of Polly. He didn’t always liked Polly’s company. One of the things he seemed to dislike the most was her bad grammar. QUOTE But if he would think to himself, if you love someone that shouldn’t matter. “He could not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her for what she had done” but then he reminded himself he was also to blame (Joyce 66). He chooses not to let part of her personality bother him because he thought to himself if he truly loved her, he should overlook it. Yet, this probably raised doubts in his mind and I think could have been one of the reasons why he had difficulty making a choice. But I also think that since he knew that he was going to marry Polly, even though he hadn’t decided to yet, and he had to overlook it because there already enough problems with their relationship. Again, Mr. Doran was paralyzed by decision

making.
Nothing in the situation would make everyone happy. There wasn’t necessarily an easy thing to do, but there was a mistake made and they all knew that retribution needed to happen. However, the characters had doubts about the hard choices they had to make. They waited to make their decision until they basically had no other decision to make; like Mrs. Mooney delayed leaving her husband until he attacked her and Mr. Doran continuing in his affair in until he was confronted. These choices defined who these characters are and the futures.