The Dubliners: A Study of Joyce's Short Stories and Their Characters' Epiphanies, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica The Dubliners: A Study of Joyce's Short Stories and Their Characters' Epiphanies e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! The Dubliners, by James Joyce The Dubliners are 15 short stories completed in 1905 and published just in 1914. The stories lack of real action and they describe the simple life of some Dubliners, from childhood to public life. These low-middle class people live their simple lives in Dublin's labyrinth: this is the one thing they all have in common. They are stuck in their lives, stuck in Dublin, from where they can not escape. They can not escape because they are too weak. They can’t have the strength to change their lives, but they weren’t always aware of this condition: it is in the story written by Joyce that we experience with them their awareness, their epiphany. This is the moment when those characters realize their condition and the fact that they can not change it. They realize their inability to escape from their life, from Dublin. This is the moment where they awake from the paralysis that held them in the unconsciousness of their condition. But still, they can’t free themselves from this paralysis. What brings the characters to this revelation are simple objects that are very much present and described by Joyce’s realism. The concrete objects in the stories have a meaning, they are put in some order for a reason. Colors means something: brown is the color of paralysis so we always have to watch out when something is brown in The Dubliners. Religious symbols have important meanings, usually they are not connected to religion, they're used in a profane way. Joyce had some influence writing this novel. One was from Nietzsche, one from Freud’s studies and also from Wagner and his use of the leitmotiv. Joyce uses this in describing characters or some situation, like the paralysis we have just seen. The sisters (childhood) This first story is dedicated to childhood, in fact the protagonist is a boy, (and not the sisters like the title would suggest, but we will see also in the other stories how the female characters exist in reference to man). This story deals with the death of a priest who had a stroke (actually it was the third). The boy, whose name isn’t given to us, looks out to the priest's house trying to understand whether he's dead or not. He was in a paralysis, that this time is both medical and metaphorical. The priest thought to the boy, but he didn’t teach him the usual priest things... he was quite strange as a priest. When the boy finds out he is dead he feels surprisingly some kind of freedom: his paralysis was a burden even to him. The boy starts understanding that not all of our thoughts and emotions are rational. That night he had a dream, he couldn’t remember it very well, but he was in Persia, it's the introduction of an exotic element: this story, in fact, contains all the elements of the Dubliners, and exotic will be a constant in many of them. The morning after he goes to the house of the priest. There are the two sisters who are talking about the last strange days of the dead: he was always too scrupulous, his duties were too much. They reveal that one day he broke a chalice, that is the most powerful symbol to the priest and from that day he became more and more strange. One day they found him alone in the dark in a confession box, laughing hysterically to himself. The confession box introduces the claustrophobic element, another constant in the stories. We can say that in that moment he had his epiphany, his sad epiphany: he understood that he was not made to be a priest, but that he had already wasted all his life doing it. That's why he now held loosely the chalice: it's loosely like his faith. The boy finds out the mysteries of the human soul and the subconscious. Araby (childhood) In this story we have a family from whom the protagonist, another nameless boy, tries to escape: in this case the claustrophobic element is not physical, it's the family. In order to escape from the family the boy has to escape from Dublin, which is brown, the color of paralysis. The occasion to free himself it’s given by an exotic bazaar: Araby. In fact he has developed some kind of feeling to his friend sister, who calls them home when they are playing. His heart leaps when he sees her, but he is still confused by this feeling. He can't call it love, because he hadn’t nearly even spoken to her, so he calls it a “confused adoration”. When they have a very short and confused dialogue they talk about araby: the boy decides to go there to buy her a present: this will be his salvation, his way to freedom, through this some sort of love for Mangan’s sister and the escape to the bazar. When he arrives there, it is too late. The bazaar is closing and it's practically dark. In this darkness he can look inside himself and see how his escape was a failure and his epiphany is the failure of his plan. Eveline (adolescence) The first thing we can say about this story is that, unlike the others, the protagonist has a name. When Joyce gives names to his characters they are meaningful. Eveline derives from Eve, the first woman, like Eveline is the first girl protagonist. Like Eve Eveline has a temptation, that is to escape with his boyfriend Frank (who actually is not frank because he doesn’t really love her and he is a sailor). Eve accepts the temptation of the apple and makes a bad choice, Eveline doesn’t accept the temptation of the escape but still makes a bad choice. In fact she lives exploited by her abusive father, and lives a very unhappy life. We are given three very important details to understand her situation: there is a repetition of the word “dust” that is the symbol of death and represent all the Dubliners who have died and the sad situation of Eveline, then there is the photograph of a priest who managed to escape from Dublin (so we understand that in order to leave Dublin you must have a strong faith), another is the broken harmonium that symbolizes the broken harmony of the family since the mother died. We are also told that when the mother died there was an organ playing and she said a strange line in Gaelic that maybe underlined the pain of the end. In the second part of the story we are at the harbour. Two colors are mentioned: brown, paralysis and the black of the ship which is not reassuring at all. Here we assist at the complete paralysis of Eveline: her distress becomes in her mind, she starts asking god what she has to do and then it becomes physical, she starts feeling sick. Her boyfriend holding her hand becomes a constriction and not anymore a gesture of affection, the water seems bad, seems leading to danger and death. The that breaks the harmony between them: she touches his hand with a totally non intrusive meaning, but to him is a border overcome. He stopped seeing her. Four years pass. He is back to his solitary life, but one day he reads on the paper the news of her death. She was hit by a train, she was drunk, but she died of heart failure... heart failure for the shock, but also because he had left her. But he doesn’t think of this. He feels ashamed that she had given herself to the alcol, degrading herself but also, and most important, him, that used to frequent her. Little by little he starts feeling ill at ease, starts thinking why she gave herself to alcol. Thinking that it was his fault, he understands that she was lonely because he left her and then, he understands he is alone too and that, unlike Mrs Sinico who will be remembered by her family, no one will remember him. It's his epiphany: he is an outcast of life, he lives in a complete and utter loneliness. The dead (public life) At the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary Jane Morkan, the housemaid Lily greets guests. Set at the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, which celebrates the manifestation of Christ’s divinity to the Magi, the party draws together a variety of relatives and friends. Kate and Julia particularly await the arrival of their favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy, and his wife, Gretta. When they arrive, Gabriel attempts to chat with Lily as she takes his coat, but he asks her if she’s getting married and so he made a mistake, then he takes a coin from his pocket and he gives it to her. Then he joins his aunts and Gretta, who mentions coloshes. These are symbols of Gabriel’s protective attitude. They discuss their decision to stay at a hotel that evening rather than make the long trip home. Gabriel sees a picture of the balcony scene by Romeo and Juliet and this image to him about his wife, in fact when they started their relationship his family didn’t approve. The party continues and Miss Ivors, a fellow university instructor arrives. She has a pin with the symbol of Irish Revival movement, this means that she is a very fervent supporter of Irish culture. She accuses Gabriel of being “West Briton” (british who lives in Ireland) for writing literary reviews for a pro-british newspaper. Gabriel dismisses the accusation, but Miss Ivors asks him where is he going on holiday and she invites him to visit the Aran Isles, where Irish is spoken. When Gabriel declines, Miss Ivors corners him about his lack of interest in his own country. Gabriel exclaims that he is sick of Ireland. Gretta expresses her wish to go in Galway. Finally, dinner is ready, and finally Gabriel delivers his speech, in which he praises Kate, Julia, and Mary Jane for their hospitality. In the 1: part he identifies 3 quality of Irish people, hospitality, humor and humanity; in the 2% part he talks about the differences between past and present. After the speech he starts talking with other guests and he tells the story of Patrick morcan, who used to work in a glue factory and he had a horse that helped him. One day he went to a military parade riding his horse, and the horse started walking around the statue of the king. This is symbolic because the king is the king of orange who oppresses the Irish, and the horse represents the Irish who continue to revolve around the british rule without ever try to change the situation. Gabriel goes downstairs to take his coat and he sees his wife listening to a typical Irish song. Gabriel and Gretta leave the party and during the journey to the hotel he starts thinking about his relationship with Gretta. He tries to hug her but she seems detached. Gretta confesses that she has been thinking of the song from the party because a boy that she used to love had sung it to her in her youth in Galway. This boy is Michael Furey. Gabriel knows nothing about this part of her life. Gretta thinks that he died because of her, in fact when they met her grandmother decided that she had to live Galway, and so Michael stayed outside of her window in the cold for a whole night and he died of pneumonia. Gretta later falls asleep, but Gabriel remains awake and he looks at her as they have never been together. Here starts his epiphany: he realizes he is really in love with her and he understands what real love is. Seeing the snow at the window, he thinks about the people who really died, to the one that is going to die and also about himself. The snow is falling and it connects the living to the dead, but it is also a note of hope because the snow melts when spring arrives. A portrait of the artist as a young man The title is important because the article “A” suggests that this novel is one of the possible interpretations of a subject, as it happens in portraits. It talks about the life of Stephen Dedalus, who is a young irish writer who attended the Jesuit school because of his very catholic parents. The plot is mostly set in Dublin and it follows the protagonist from his childhood until the age of 20. As Stephen grows we see that he begins to rebel against his family, his religion and his nation: in fact he will go to Paris. The protagonist stands for Joyce himself and the name Dedalus is reffered to the mythological Dedalus, in fact the protagonist has to escape from the social labirinth of Dublin’s life. The narrator in the first part is a third person narrator, at the end is a first person one. @Poesia sul libro: Where was his boyhood now? This passage represents the crucial moment of the novel, the protagonist (Stephen Dedalus) has gone to the beach with some friends but suddenly finds himself alone. He understands that he’so longer a boy. And he is happy because he feels free, he's able to make decisions for . He sees a beautiful girl in the sea. In his perception she is like a sea bird (line 25) He talks about this girl and he describes her “her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane’s” This meeting is important for him, its something holy. The profane joy (riga 38) represents the protagonist’s epiphany: in fact he realizes another faith is possible, the girl is seen as a profane angel of the religion of art. There is also a profane use of religion words for example “holy silence of his ecstasy r. 42 “angel” r. 44 1» At line 43 there is the definition of art “to live, to triumph, to recreate life out of life Ulysses by James Joyce This is an anti-novel and its also one of the most discussed one. It take place in a single day. The events that happen to the protagonist (Mr. Bloom) are compared to the corrisponding events in the Odissey and Its also divided in 3 parts like the Odissey. Ulysses is the archetype of the epical hero while Mr Bloom is a very simple modern man, he’s an anti hero, he has no adventures, Molly, his wife, is in contrast with Penelope, infact Molly is not loyal at all, she has a lover and Mr Bloom knows about it. there is not a narrator, the point of view changes and we are often told the thoughs of the characters. The funeral This passage describes very well the use of the narrator in the novel. In the first part there is a narrator but then, without any segnal, we are transported inside the protagonist's mind. The interior mologue starts and we see that all that he thinks is some way connected to death. There are a lot of short sentences that give the idea of the thoughts, in this way the interior monologue is pushed to the extreme. MODERNISM The advent of Modernism The term modernism refers to an international movement which involved Western literature, music, the visual arts and the cinema in the first decades of the 20th century. As a literary movement is typically associated with the period after WWI. The modernists expressed the desire to break with the past and find new fields of