JAMES JOYCE

DUBLINERS

• Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories, divided according to the age of the protagonists: there's a group of stories which talk about childhood, others talk about adolescence, others about adulthood and others about public life, where people are adult and have a public rule, more or less important.
• All the stories have in common the ideas of paralysis and epiphany. Paralysis is a feeling of being physically and morally paralysed. It's physical because linked to something external and psychological because of the idea of the duty. Religion, family, job or relationships can make a person unable to decide of his own life. Paralysis is the lack of action and Dublin is the centre of paralysis; Dubliners can be divided into 2 groups: some accept their condition because they're not aware of being paralysed, they don't realize it, and some others are aware of their paralysis but they lack the courage to break the chains that binds them. There's a way not to feel paralysed, that's escape, go away from Dublin, but people in Dubliners are not able to go away. The characters feel the impulse to go away from Dublin, impulse derived from the sense of being a prisoner. This impulse is always linked to failure. Escape is rare and difficult because Dubliners aren't strong enough to succeed cutting the bonds which tie them to their world. In this sense, epiphany, caused by something trivial, unimportant which happens in your life, which has the power to wake you up and makes you aware of your condition. It could be a gesture, an object or a song which shows the character that his life is not as he would like it to be. Coming to awareness is the climax of the stories of the Dubliners.

The protagonists all share some features: they are all weak, fearful, afraid of what changes and they're slaves of their familiar, moral, cultural, religious and political life.

The rule of the author is very important in these stories, because Joyce compels the reader to go beyond what can be seen, beyond the usual aspect of things and to discover the hidden meaning which is deep inside, not on the surface. For example, he wants to discover why Dubliners are paralysed.

Joyce uses a mixture of realism and symbolism: we can use Dubliners as a map of Dublin, because the places are well described in every detail, but, in the meantime, the details haven't got just a descriptive function, but also a further meaning, like the snow that cover everything in The Dead, that seems even like something that levels everything.

In order to narrate his stories, Joyce uses a non-omniscient external narrator and the story is told from the point of view of a character. He uses narrated monologue, free direct speech (not using inverted commas or "he said") and he uses the direct thoughts, the first step towards the stream of consciousness. The language used by people corresponds to the age and to the cultural level of the characters: for example, a child's language is simple, with slang expressions or grammatical errors.

• The Dead: the dead is the last story of Dubliners. The protagonists are Gabriel Conroy, a teacher, and his wife Gretta. During a party, Gretta hears a song, which reminds her of a young man, Michael Furey, who used to sing it and who died for her love when he was just 17. He becomes aware of his condition because he understands that Michael Furey is still alive in Gretta's mind and through the feeling for her he can be even more alive and present than him, who is his husband. Thinking about life and death, Gabriel understands that sometimes living people are alive but spiritually dead and the dead ones can be alive in the living's minds. He's imagining to be surrounded by dead people and he can't distinguish them from alive ones. In this sense, we can understand the symbolical meaning of the snow, that cover everything so that we can't distinguish anything. Snow gives the idea of living people who sometimes live like the dead. It's both symbol of death, because cover everything, the dead and the living, and of life and purification, because it's clear, white, pure. We can see the symbolism also in Gabriel's name, that's a name from the Bible, indicating the prince of fire but also of the angels. There's a third person narrator and the language is very similar to the poetical one with many alliterations and repetitions.
• Evelyne: it is a story from the "adolescence" group. She's a 19-years-old young woman, who lives with her father, getting old. Her mother died and when she heard the organ player, he reminds her of the day she died, but her father got angry and made him go away. She's planning to leave Dublin and to go to Buenos Aires with her boyfriend Frank, who her father doesn't approve. He's a sailor and tried to convinced her to elope. She doesn't say that she loves him but Frank can help her find a new life and he loves her. Evelyne is torn inside because she'd like to go away but she's tied to her life, she can't break the ties which oblige her to live her life with her father, because she made a promise to her mother (to take care of him). When she's about to leave with Frank, she can't move, she's paralysed physically and psychologically because she can't even express her feelings. Frank is on the ship calling her but she can't answer. She doesn't go because she's tied to her father through the promise she made to her mother. She sacrifices her happiness to duty and memories. Joyce wants to show the sense of paralysis, the inability to act and decide for your own life, and he also want to show that sometimes people are able to change. Evelyne, like some other characters, is aware or her condition and has got the desire to escape, but she couldn't.

ULYSSES

• The central character is Leopold Bloom, a common man who leaves his home in Dublin at 8 o'clock on a Thursday morning in June and returns finally at 2 o'clock the following morning. The author tells every single moment of the day of Mr Bloom and everyone of the 18 chapters has got a title that reminds us of a character, a scene or a place of the Homer's Odyssey.
• The narrative technique is based on the stream of consciousness, which works with associations of ideas. Joyce write every little thought of Mr Bloom and so the reader knows everything passes in his mind. The author doesn't translates it in a correct language, but he just write down what Mr Bloom think as it passes in his mind. All the story is a mixture of narration and free thoughts, but without any introductions we pass immediately from narration to stream of consciousness.
• Sometimes Joyce uses words in a particular way, merging two words (groanmother, smellsipped) in order to indicate that two actions are contemporary.