Scarica "Dubliners" by James Joyce - a brief summary e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! DUBLINERS James Joyce was an Irish writer. He was born in Dublin, in 1882. Joyce began to write in 1903, while he was living in Trieste, Italy. His first published work was Chamber Music in 1907. Joyce’s famous works are Ulysses (1922), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Finnegans Wake (1939), Exiles (1918), and Dubliners (1914). Joyce died in 1941 in Zurich. Dubliners is a collection of fifteen short stories. Each story portrays the lives of ordinary people in Dublin in their different phases of life. Joyce wanted to show how Dubliners were oppressed by political, cultural, religious and economic forces, which led them to a sort of moral and psychological paralysis. James Joyce divided the stories into four groups: - CHILDHOOD: An Encounter: two young adventurous schoolboys decided to play truant. They planned to go to the Pigeon House, but the weather was sultry, so they went to sit on a sloping bank in front of the river Liffey. While the two boys were talking, a strange old man sat beside them. He talked about the weather, school, books, sweethearts, and even about corporal punishment: he told them how he would have loved to whip rough boys. The two guys were very scared of that man, so they decided to run away home. Araby: a young boy fell in love with his friend’s sister. One day, the girl spoke to the boy and they talked about the bazaar “Araby” and she said to him how she would have loved to go there, but she couldn’t because there was a retreat in her convent. The boy promised to the girl to go to the bazaar and to bring her a present. The night he had decided to go to the bazaar, he had to wait for his uncle to have some money, but the man came back home late. So, when he arrived at the bazaar, it was closing down and he couldn’t buy anything. -ADOLESCENCE: Eveline: Eveline was a young girl who wanted to go away from her house and her father. She planned to run away for Buenos Aires with her lover Frank. But Eveline wasn’t certain because, although her father mistreated her, he was old and alone, his wife was dead and he hadn’t other sons, so he needed her. The day of departure, Eveline felt guilty and, although Frank tried to convince her, she didn’t sail with him and remained in Dublin. The Boarding House: Mrs Mooney, after the separation from her husband, set up a boarding house. Her daughter, Polly, fell in love with a costumer, Mr Doran, who worked in a Catholic wine-merchant’s office. When Mrs Mooney learnt about their affair, she decided to ask Mr Doran to marry her daughter. Mr Doran was frightened, because if he hadn’t married Polly, he would have lost his job and there would have been a scandal, but if he had done, his family would have looked down on the girl, because she was a little vulgar. But, after the meeting with Mrs Mooney, Mr Doran agreed to marry Polly to avoid scandal. -MATURITY: A Little Cloud: Little Chandler met his friend Ignatius after eight years. During their meeting, Ignatius told his friend of his several trips and of his freedom because he wasn’t married. Little Chandler felt envious, because his life was totally different: he had never travelled, he was married, he had a son and he couldn’t become a writer because of his shyness. When Little Chandler came back home from the meeting, he sat in the living-room with his child. While the man was reading a poetry book, the baby started to cry and he couldn’t hush him. As his wife took the baby in her arms, the baby stopped to cry. A Painful Case: Mr Duffy was fond of music and he liked going to operas and concerts. One evening, at a concert, Mr Duffy met a lady, Mrs Sinico. The two started to meet other times: they used to walk together, read books and share ideas. But, when Mr Duffy understood that for Mrs Sinico their relation meant more than a simply friendship, he ended their meetings. After four years from that, one evening, Mr Duffy found out a paragraph about Mrs Sinico’s death: she had been knocked down by a train, maybe with her intention. First, Mr Duffy thought that the lady was unfit to live, but after, he felt that he had sentenced her to death,
