Dubliners general themes

Dubliners general themes

1. Growth

   • Childhood/Adolescence/Maturity/Public Life
     • Each as its own movement like in a symphony

2. Innocence and experience

3. The city as a character

4. Dublin as the centre of paralysis

   • Joyce denounced this phenomena to his brother Stanislaus
     • "What's the matter with you is that you're afraid to live. You and people like you. The city is suffering from hemiphlegia of the will"
   • Theme explored in all 15 stories
   • Introduced in the very first sentence of the collection and said about the priest in "The Sisters"
     • "There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke"
       • "I said softly to myself the word paralysis"

5. Freedom and imprisonment

   • "He was a prisoner for life" - A Little Cloud

6. "Chapter of the moral history of my country"

   • Hybrid Fiction
     • Modernism
       • Fragmented world view
       • Consciousness
       • Trying to capture the moment/flow
     • Realism
       • Probable
         • Reader finds actions credible
       • Ethical
         • Characters and their flaws
     • Naturalism
       • Environment
       • Determinism

7. Moments of epiphany

   • When the true essence and beauty of even the most mundane thing is apprehended
   • Middle section of the tripartite story construct
     • Exposition --> Action/Illumination --> Epiphany/Resolution
       • Tripartite structure influenced by Dante's Divine Comedy
   • Disappointment in a character's life is made abundantly clear
     • Little Chandler looking at the photo of his wife

8. Linguistic unity

   • Lexis of ugliness
     • Emphasise the degraded and seedy nature of Dublin
       • Strong emphasis of physical unpleasantness
         • "Her features were blunt. She had broad nostrils, a straggling mouth which lay open in a contended leer, and two projecting front teeth" - Two Gallants
         • "Had great gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth" - An Encounter