James Joyce's Dubliners
...hed by 1905 (Parrinder 248). In a letter written to the English publisher Grant Richards in May 1906, Joyce explains his aims in writing Dubliners: “My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. That is how I have arranged them. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard. I cannot do any more than this. I cannot alter what I have written” (McCarthy 2). A central theme in Dubliners is the desire to escape the mundane, downtrodden, everyday lives that people face. Joyce describes the plight of his characters as one of paralysis, which is a metaphor for the doomed and self-defeating life of Dublin. But the stories are not merely the bitter tales of an exiled writer seeking revenge. The heartbreak, anger, irony and hope found in these stories show both his affection for Dublin and his criticism of it. I focused on the stories of adolescence and adulthood, and I saw that in many of the stories the characters had a desire to escape but eventually that desire leads to resignation and acceptance of the situation. Joyce calls these experiences “epiphanies”, a word which has connotations of a religious revelation. But the epiphanies that the characters experience do not result in an inspiration but instead leads them to better understand their particular circumstances, which are full of sadness and routine. Eveline Hill from the story “Eveline” is a young nineteen year old woman who is frustrated by her situation. She lives with her oppressive, alcoholic and sometimes abusive father, her mother went mad and is now dead, and her brothers both have grown up and left. She has to work hard both at home and work and the narrator describes it well: “It was hard work – a hard life – but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life” (Joyce 26). She sits in her house and reviews her decision to elope with her lover, a sailor named Frank, who has promised to marry her and take her to Buenos Aires, Argentina to live, thus giving her a new home and a new life. Eveline’s father thought that Frank is not what he seems and he forbids her to see him, but disobeyed and is now on the brink of leaving Dublin. The goodbye letters are already written to her brother and father and she is supposed to meet Frank on the docks to leave, but she lingers at home still. She remembers happier times, such as her father’s caring for her when she was sick and a family picnic before her mother died. She also remembers her promise to her mother to keep the home together as long as she could. But Eveline also remembers how her mother died in madness: “As she mused the pitiful vision of her mother’s life laid its spell on the very quick of her being-that life of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness . . . She stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But she wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to happiness.” (Joyce 27). Eveline goes to the docks to leave, but as she stands there preparing to board a ship with Frank, she doubts her decision and prays to God for guidance “to show her what was her duty” as “Her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer” (Joyce 28). As Frank calls her to come onto the ship, “All the seas of the world came tumbling down upon her heart. He was drowning her into them: he would drown her” (Joyce 28). Her fear of the unknown and her intense emotions for Frank, combined with her nagging sense of family duty, cause her to have an epiphany of sorts – she decides that she must remain with what is familiar. In this decision she is essentially choosing unhappiness over happiness, but she is paralyzed – “passive, like a helpless animal” and she cannot go with him. The story ends with the line: “Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.” (Joyce 28). The ending is abrupt and the reader is left to conclude whether or not she made the right choice. Eveline has been confined all her life and now has a self-restraint that cuts off her capacity for action, and these feelings of fear and restraint are found in other stories in Dubliners. Joyce also tells a story of someone who is almost the exact opposite of Eveline. In “Counterparts”, a man named Farrington rebels violently against his dull routine life. The paralyzing, tedious drudgery of his job as a document copier, combined with his overbearing and uncompromising boss, causes rage to simmer and build inside him. On the day that we spend with Farrington, he contemplates attacking his boss: “The man stared fixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosby and Alleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for a few moments and then that passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of thirst. The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a good night’s drinking.” (Joyce 66). He leaves work during the day to get a quic...