Term Paper on "James Joyce Dubliners"

Term Paper 8 pages (3380 words) Sources: 6 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

James Joyce's Dubliners

Dubliners by James Joyce believe that in composing my chapter of moral history in exactly the way I have composed it I have taken the first step towards the spiritual liberation of my country."

James A. Joyce, May 1906 (Barger, 1999)

The Dubliners by James Joyce is a body of work that was mightily influenced by the social and moral problems in Dublin around the time the short stories were published in 1914. Certainly it is widely known in the scholarly and literary community that Joyce wrote about Dublin's many dark sides by using his characters and settings to put Dublin on display for all the world to see. Those Dublin problems and issues were many and had at their roots political and religious themes.

The city during that period of time has been described by some scholars (Joyce included) as a place of "paralysis"; and so it should come as no surprise to readers paying close attention to Joyce that the characters reflect the trauma and tribulations of the city. In this paper, several female characters and their "paralysis" - in various forms at myriad levels - will be reviewed and analyzed.

In An Encounter, Joyce employs his literary innovations - which entailed "...The narrated monologue and patterned repetition of images (chiamus)" (Gray, 2002) - as the subject turns to "sweethearts" (p. 28) and the word "sweetheart" is repeated several times. Several images of "girls" are presented by the boys and the older man, setting the reader up for what is to come later in the story about females.

He repeated his phrases over and over again" (p. 29) the little boy narrator stated, in reference to the old man with yellow teeth and a cane. "Every boy has a little sweetheart," said the man who was "shabbily dressed" and was "fairly old." The boys played along; Mahony bragged that he had "three totties" (which described both a high class whore and a little girl in the period of history); and the old man mentioned how "soft" girls' hands and girl's hair was. As beautiful as her hair was, and as nice as her white hands were, "all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew," the man added. Did that imply that girls suffered some kind of paralysis of morality? Is this raging at the boys designed to protect girls from being caught in the male trap? Or is it based on something societal that was hidden from "proper" discussions? And with this gnarly old coot, and the "bull session" taking place, can the truth come out that many girls in Dublin put on a good air, but down deep they're caught up in a nasty theme? Products of the paralysis of Dublin?

The old man's crude looks and tattered clothes juxtapose starkly with the images of the girls in the narrative. The funky old yellow-toothed man continues telling his young audience that rough boys need to be whipped "and well whipped," not just a "box on the ear" but a "nice warm whipping" (p. 30).

And then girls came back into the story, as the man stated that a boy talking to girls or "having a girl for a sweetheart" would call for a whipping; and if that boy told lies about his girlfriend, "he would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world." Why is he saying this?

There was "nothing in this world he would like so well as..." whipping a boy like he'd never been whipped, the narrator states on page 31. The "girls" in this story are invisible, yet they're already locked into a preconceived mold, imprisoned by the stereotyped images presented to the boys of their loveliness, whiteness, and softness. What readers are expected to know is that boys probably brag and lie about their relationships with girls, and those lies deserve punishment.

Araby is a story about Mangan's sister; the narrator has a mad crush on her, knows every movement she makes, such as the "soft rope of her hair" (p. 34) tossing from side to side as her body moves, and her name alone "was like a summons to all my foolish blood" (35). Readers are treated to a long, passionate build-up in this story. Her image followed him around in places "hostile to romance." He catches a glimpse of her petticoat and admits to his "confused adoration" of this woman. Readers begin to get a sense that Mangan's sister is isolated on page 36, as she declines the narrator's offer to attend the Bazaar at Araby. Her "brown-clad figure" is burned into his consciousness, and he obsesses. When speaking to him, she turns a silver bracelet "round and round her wrist" (p. 36) that seems to suggest nervousness or discomfort of a social kind.

In this story, the narrator's romantic fantasies are an illusion, and the only "real" love exchanges readers are treated are found on page 41: "O, I never said such a thing!" "O, but you did!" "O, but I didn't..." And the woman of his daily dreams is frozen, paralyzed, unattainable.

On the first page, in the first two paragraphs, readers know that Eveline is definitely suffering the paralysis of time. Things change, where there were once fields there is now a housing project; people leave, people die, "everything changes" (p. 43). "Where on earth did all the dust" come from? And if she left, she would "...not be treated like her mother had been"; and she feared that her father would be violent towards her like he was towards her brothers.

He had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother's sake" (p. 44); and what was worse, there was nobody to protect her now, at age 19, because not only was her mom dead, Ernest was dead and her father was very stingy with money. He accused her of doing the very things he did, like squandering it on alcohol. She was clearly stuck, taking care of the two children left for her, worrying about what her father might do to her. Moreover, the man she met who could lead her out of the prison-like / dysfunctional environment she was in, named Frank, was hated by her dad.

Father had "forbidden her to have anything to say to him... [and] One day he had quarreled with Frank and after that she had to meet her lover secretly" (p. 46). A street organ reminded her of her promise to her mother, which in a way was part of what her paralysis was all about; she had promised her dying mother that she would take care of the house and raise the two children. When you make a promise to someone who is dying, it takes on a life of its own, and turning your back on your promise to that dying person brings forth a lot of guilt. The organ music was also playing the night her mom died - and her dad was part of that misty moment because he had shooed the organ player away and blurted out, "Damned Italians!"

She was under the "spell" of her mother's life, and its "pitiful vision" of "commonplace sacrifices" closed in with a "final craziness."

In the end, she tries to leave but she can't. "Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too." The truth that readers come to perceive here is that there was to be no escaping the life she was locked into. She trembles as she hears her mother's voice muttering something that makes no sense to the reader ("Derevaun Seraun!"). Writing in James Joyce's Dubliners: An Illustrated Edition, John Wyse Jackson and Bernard McGinley explain (Jackson, et al., 32) that Derevaun Seraun might mean "The end of pleasure is pain" or "Farewell to the white oak-woods" or perhaps "My own little one, grasp my hand."

All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart" (p. 48) and a "bell clanged upon her heart." She is drowning in pity and having her heart broken by a clanging bell. She was stuck. Paralyzed. Dying to leave this detention center of a life, she fooled herself into thinking she could actually pull it off.

In reading Joyce's lines, we can hear the whistle blowing on the ship ("...a long, mournful whistle into the mist") (p. 48), just as it does to warn vessels in front that it is coming, and to warn passengers intending on boarding that it is leaving, so jump on board or be left behind. She will be left behind. It is her legacy.

She was, after all, "like a helpless animal" (p. 48) indeed she was incapable of escaping the chains of her pitiful life. And even though she loved Frank very much, the die was cast; her life as a prisoner of fate in Dublin was a done… READ MORE

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