Dubliners: Childhood to Adulthood & Themes of Religion, Alcohol, Life-Death by James Joyce, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica Dubliners: Childhood to Adulthood & Themes of Religion, Alcohol, Life-Death by James Joyce e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! DUBLINERS STRUCTURE: GINEVRA Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories which were all written by James Joyce in 1905, except for the “Dead”, the last and longest story, which was written in 1907. Even if lacking obvious action, they manage to lead to a moral, social or spiritual revelation. FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS: GINEVRA Before analyzing this Modern masterpiece, it is fundamental to explain three concepts: paralysis, escape and epiphany. The latter is a sudden spiritual manifestation caused by a trivial gesture, an external object, or a banal situation, which reveals the character’s inner truths. During these revelatory moments, the reader’s attention focuses on the real meaning of the narrative. Instead, the paralysis is meant in both a physical, resulting from external forces, and a moral way, linked to religion, politics, and culture. Joyce’s Dubliners accept their condition either because they are not aware of it or because they lack the courage to break the chains that bind them. They are spiritually weak and they can almost be considered slaves of their familiar, moral, cultural, religious and political life and such paralysis is also reflected in their relationships because they are unable to relate to others and communicate. These paralyzed characters could be compared to the ones of Italo Svevo, the so-called inepts. The oppressive effects of religious, political, cultural and economic forces on the lives of lower-middle-class Dubliners highly influenced the psychologically realistic picture of Dubliners as afflicted people. They all seem to be caught up in an endless web of despair and even if they want to escape from such reality, they are unable to because of their spiritual weakness. The moral center of Dubliners is not paralysis alone but its revelation to its victims: coming to awareness or self-realization marks the climax of these stories. The main theme is the failure to find a way out of paralysis. The opposite of it is an escape and its consequent failure: it originates from an impulse caused by a sense of enclosure that many characters experience, yet none of them succeeds in freeing themselves. SETTING: GINEVRA As one can understand from the title, all the stories are set in Dublin and the physical structure of the city plays a fundamental role in the collection. Several editions include a map of early 1900s Dublin to help the reader get a mental picture of the book’s settings. In fact, Dubliners is set in the various boroughs of Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century. Irish nationalism was at an all-time high, and Dublin was at the center of the country’s industrial and political activity, particularly the push for independence from Great Britain. James Joyce published this collection in 1914, shortly before the violent Irish War for Independence, which resulted in national supremacy. The lives of the characters are intricately linked to the state of Ireland as a relatively poor nation with an uncertain political future. Because of a struggling economy, many Dubliners are caught in cycles of abuse, poverty, and alcoholism, perpetuated by other cultural characteristics, such as class stratification and religious stagnancy. Further, just as Ireland was torn between seeking independence from England and requiring its aid, many characters claim nationalism but seek validation from the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, often to their detriment. Joyce himself was hostile to city life because he believed it degraded its citizens and he considered Dublin as a place where true feeling and compassion for others did not exist, where cruelty and selfishness used to lie just below the surface. AIM: GINEVRA He intended to write a chapter on the moral history of his country and he chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to him the center of paralysis. He presents it from 4 different points of view: ● the one of childhood: The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby ● the one of adolescence: Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, and The Boarding House ● the one of maturity: A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, and A Painful Case ● the one of public life: Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and The Dead Therefore, the structure of Dubliners can be seen to parallel the development of a human being from childhood to adulthood. GENRE: GIULIA In Dubliners, Joyce primarily works within the genre of realist fiction. Realist fiction achieves this by ignoring elements of fantasy and the supernatural as well as by avoiding artificial storytelling conventions that had been passed down from, for example, the romances of the Middle Ages. Since the nineteenth-century literary realism attempted to portray the world as it really was, it tended to represent quotidian, everyday activities rather than sweeping adventures and heroic feats. In connection to this, realist fiction also avoided focusing on the ruling class and its small world of wealth and privilege. Realism is often mixed with symbolism since the external details generally have a deeper meaning. The name of certain objects is carefully chosen, for example, the choice of the term “street organ” which is also called “harmonium” in Eveline, in contrast to the common names given for the rest of the furniture in the living room takes a symbolic meaning: it points out the general disharmony of Eveline’s family, where the dead mother was a victim of the violent father and Eveline now shares the same destiny. It is possible to find also religious and color symbolisms, in fact, brown, gray and yellow frequently suggest the pervading atmosphere of despair and paralysis. The short stories in Dubliners all bear the mark of realism. Above all, Joyce’s realism can be seen in his detailed depiction of Dublin. Most of the landmarks, buildings, and businesses mentioned by name really existed in turn-of-the-century Dublin, lending the stories a heightened sense of reality. In addition to realism, Dubliners is also associated with a related but distinct literary movement known as naturalism. The one thing that distinguishes naturalism from realism is its emphasis on how social conditions and environmental factors shape a person’s life and character. Another distinguishing feature is naturalism’s tendency to depict the seedier side of life, focusing less on middle-class issues and instead portraying IDENTITY GINEVRA: The search for identity troubles every main character in Dubliners, as each of them struggles to navigate between personal desires, society's expectations, and relationships with others. The children of the first three stories struggle to find a place in a world that is absent parents, confusing, and often threatening or hostile. Young people, such as Eveline in "Eveline" or Jimmy in "After the Race," struggle to decide what their futures will be as they make decisions in the present. ESCAPE GIULIA: Dublin is not an especially large city. Many of the same locations, such as Stephen's Green, the city's largest park, and the shopping district of Grafton Street, appear repeatedly in the stories. The rigid morality of Dublin's society, which applies to the poor as well as to the wealthy, places further restrictions on everyone's behavior. The economy is similarly rigid, with few opportunities for anyone to advance out of the class into which they were born (incidentally, these were factors that led Joyce himself to abandon Dublin for the European continent). In this oppressive atmosphere, plenty of other characters dream of escape. Eveline makes plans to go to South America with her lover. Unable to physically escape from the city, other characters turn to different means of escape. Alcohol provides an easy and readily available escape for many Dubliners. INTERSECTION OF LIFE AND DEATH GINEVRA: the monotony of Dublin life leads Dubliners to live in a suspended state of life and death SYMBOLS: FOOD GIULIA: It is a typical symbol in literature that reinforces bonds between people, in fact simply sharing meals is a way of strengthening social bonds in real life. Food and meals also inspire longing and they are seen as a means of showing affection to other people. ALCOHOL GINEVRA: Drinking can represent an occasion for forming social bonds, yet it can also be deeply destructive WEATHER GIULIA: Weather conditions reflect the mood of events in each story or the mindset of the characters EVELINE SUMMARY: Giulia Eveline Hill sits at a window in her home and looks out onto the street while fondly recalling her childhood, when she played with other children in a field now developed with new homes. Her thoughts turn to her sometimes abusive father with whom she lives, and to the prospect of freeing herself from her hard life juggling jobs as a shop worker and a nanny to support herself and her father. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. As Eveline recalls, Frank’s courtship of her was pleasant until her father disapproves of Frank. After that, the two lovers met clandestinely. As Eveline reviews her decision to embark on a new life, she holds in her lap two letters, one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She reasons that her life at home, cleaning and cooking, is hard but perhaps not the worst option—her father is not always mean, after all. The sound of a street organ then reminds her of her mother’s death, and her thoughts change course. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank. At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She appears detached and worried, overwhelmed by the images around her, and prays to God for direction. Her previous declaration of intent seems to have never happened. When the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. She clutches the barrier as Frank is swept into the throng moving toward the ship. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless. TONE OF THE STORY: Ginevra The tone of the narrator is passionate and tells the story through an intimate narrative. The emotions and feelings of the protagonist are clearly described, and it seems that the narrator feels for the protagonist and wants her to get out of this miserable situation. The narrator in this story offers a self-conscious examination of the city of Dublin. ANALYSIS: Ginevra Eveline’s story presents the danger of holding onto the past when facing the future. She is the first portrait of a female in Dubliners, and it reflects the conflicting pull many women in early twentieth-century Dublin felt between a domestic life rooted in the past and the possibility of a new married life abroad. She also represents how few options are available to a working-class woman in Dublin. One moment, Eveline feels happy to leave her hard life, yet at the next moment, she worries about fulfilling promises to her dead mother. She grasps the letters she’s written to her father and brother, revealing her inability to let go of those family relationships, despite her father’s cruelty and her brother’s absence. She clings to the older and more pleasant memories and imagines what other people want her to do or will do for her. She sees Frank as a rescuer, saving her from her domestic situation. Eveline suspends herself between the call of home and the past and the call of new experiences and the future, unable to make a decision. The threat of repeating her mother’s life evokes Eveline’s epiphany that she must leave with Frank and embark (begin) on a new phase in her life, but this realization is short-lived. She hears a street organ, and when she remembers the street organ that played on the night before her mother’s death Eveline resolves not to repeat her mother’s life of “commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness,” but she does exactly that. Like the young boys of “An Encounter” and “Araby,” she wants to escape, but her reliance on routine and repetition overrides such impulses. On the docks with Frank, away from the familiarity of home, Eveline seeks guidance in the routine habit of prayer. Her action is the first sign that she in fact hasn’t made a decision, but instead remains fixed in a circle of indecision. Though Eveline fears that Frank will drown her in their new life, her reliance on everyday rituals is what causes Eveline to freeze and not follow Frank onto the ship. Eveline’s paralysis within a rotation of repetition leaves her a “helpless animal,” stripped of human will and emotion. The story does not suggest that Eveline returns home and continues her life but shows her transformation into an automaton that lacks expression. Eveline will stay hover in mindless repetition in Dublin on her own. On the docks with Frank, the possibility of living a fully realized life left her. CHARACTERS: EVELINE HILL: Giulia The protagonist of the story, Eveline is a hard-working Irish woman around age nineteen living with her father in her childhood home in Dublin. She lives a hard life caring for her abusive father and two children who have been left in her care, while also working in the Stores, the popular name for a local shop. She gives all of her earnings to her father, who still scolds her and accuses her of spending her money irresponsibly. He also has increasingly begun to threaten her, since she is no longer a child and neither of her brothers, Harry and Ernest, nor her mother, are around to protect her anymore. As a result of this stress, Eveline has begun to suffer from heart palpitations. Despite this, she still appreciates the familiarity and comfort of home, so it is particularly hard for her to make a decision when she finds herself contemplating whether or not to run away to Buenos Ayres with her lover, Frank. Much like in “Araby,” the conflict of the story happens entirely in the protagonist’s mind. Eveline feels obligated to stay in Dublin and fulfill her responsibilities and keep her promise to keep the house together, but she also feels that she should have the right to pursue her own happiness, rather than always attending to the needs of others. Eveline is deeply religious and continually prays to God, asking for guidance with her difficult decision. She feels perpetually powerless over her situation, and looks to either God or Frank to save her. Afraid of ending up like her mother, who continually sacrificed herself for her family and eventually went insane, Eveline decides to go meet Frank at the station and continue with her plan to run away. However, at the last minute she can only stare at the sea, overcome by anxiety and emotion, and watch Frank board the ship alone. Eveline is driven by fear, but and if she left, she would die as soon as she loses her identity. The same feeling can be further extended to Irishmen who didn’t stand for their liberation because they didn’t want to lose their colonial identity. This feeling of nostalgia results in immense losses that are irreparable. For historical mistakes, there can be no emendations made, and they carry dire consequences. WOMEN AND SOCIETY: Ginevra Eveline is the first female story in Dubliners. Eveline is a typical twentieth-century woman who faces the majority of the problems that were usual then. In that society, the hierarchy was the organizational structure, and women had inferior value to men. This led to the oppression of women by men. Women were subjugated and made powerless. This space was filled by a man who was powerful, and thus he used to pretend that he is doing her a favor by bestowing his power on her, and she should be grateful. Thus in Eveline, the protagonist is in need of a male who can support her emotionally and physically and fill the void for her. She finds that in the form of Frank but her skepticism of him prevents her from breaking the chains, and she is not able to lessen the system. A woman’s perception in that society is of a fragile and delicate being that needs protection, and this view was shared by both men and women. This is a burden in Eveline’s way, and she accepts it, leading herself to a closed alley. She does not take the risk because her mother had not done so, and she follows suit, making her a conformist instead of a rebel. This is a trap that can’t be broken until a woman defies this concept and considers herself on par with men. ESCAPISM AND THE EXOTIC: Giulia Eveline is weary of the hardships and the grim life that she is leading. She wants to change the situation she is living in, and for that purpose, she wants to flee to Buenos Aires. She is not respected here, and she is eager to have respect. For this purpose, she wants to get married to Frank. The society in Argentina will be different, and people won’t judge her for her past. This is an insinuation towards her sex-related activities in the past where there may have been certain dark shades, and she wants to get rid of them. She fancies that escape will be a solution to all her problems. The idea attracts her, but when the time to make a decision comes, she can not decide because it in itself is a hard struggle. Through this theme, the author conveys the message that escape doesn’t always yield positive results and may even worsen the situation. PARALYSIS AND INACTION: Ginevra In the majority of the stories in Dubliners, the inability to take bold steps is noticed clearly. The same is the case with Eveline; she takes the step and reaches port but is unable to board the ship. She is paralyzed at the final moment when a single step can change her life, and she refuses to take this step. Her mental paralysis is caused by the nostalgic feelings and the disbelief of men that she has seen. She knows the domestic violence that men use as an instrument to oppress women, and the same may happen at Buenos Ayres, where Frank may exploit her. This paralysis is also a result of the long colonial rule of the British, which has caused the Irish to lose confidence in themselves. SYMBOLS: (Giulia) The symbolism of the word street organ the choice of the term “street organ” which is also called “harmonium” in Eveline, in contrast to the common names given for the rest of the furniture in the living room takes a symbolic meaning: it points out the general disharmony of Eveline’s family, where the dead mother was a victim of the violent father and Eveline now shares the same destiny. DUST: Giulia Dust is used as a symbol of monotony. It keeps gathering in the home, and Eveline is bound to clean it. Her life is monotonous, and there is no change taking place in it. She will take care of home, father, and things, and there will be no change, she grows tired of it and wants to change it. Dust may also mean emptiness and uselessness in life. It has made her fed up with life, and at one point, we note when she says, ‘where does this dust come from.’ She doesn’t want to know the reason behind so much dust but her disgust with the monotony. WATER: Ginevra Water has many connotative meanings, and one of them is fear. Water in the form of the sea represents fear because of its immensity and being unknown. The protagonist fears boarding the ship because it may drown her. This expresses her fear of the life that is about to join but is reluctant and eventually gives up. Sea also represents freedom, and she fears unlimited freedom like the fear of the unknown, she admires it but from a distance. RELIGION: Ginevra Religion is used in a symbolic, logical way as the instrument of oppression in this play. It is the reason behind maintaining the status quo, and the system doesn’t change, as discussed in the themes section.