Dubliners
| Written by: | James Joyce |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Short story collection |
| First published: | June 1914 |
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Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried.
—Dubliners, "The Dead"
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Dubliners is a 1914 collection of short stories about various residents of Dublin written by James Joyce. It was his first published work and is much less experimental than Ulysses, although still a masterpiece. The stories are interrelated, although no one character repeats. But the first and last stories (especially the last one) can be very easily interpereted as being about early versions of Stephen Dedalus, the main character of his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man.
The collection consists of the following fifteen short stories:
- The Sisters
- An Encounter
- Araby
- Eveline
- After the Race
- Two Gallants
- The Boarding House
- A Little Cloud
- Counterparts
- Clay
- A Painful Case
- Ivy Day in the Committee Room
- A Mother
- Grace
- The Dead
Tropes used in Dubliners include:
- Abusive Parents: Farrington in "Counterparts", who beats up his kid and pisses away his earnings.
- Creator Provincialism: You'll need to do a bit of googling while you read, there are a lot of references that are very specific to the place, and especially to the time.
- Creepy Cleanliness: Mr. Duffy's room is dominated by order, cleanliness and symmetry, however it becomes creepier as you keep on reading. It stands for the protagonist's paralysis, as well as the sterility of his own life.
- Epiphanic Prison: In a sense, all characters are trapped in an Epiphanic Prison called Dublin. The most straight-forward example is Eveline Hill, whose mental paralysis prevents her escape even when she is given the chance.
- Fetch Quest: the protagonist of "Araby" promises to get Mangan's sister, his crush, something from the exotically-named bazaar Araby, as if he were a knight heading for the holy land in search for a sacred relic.
- Gold Digger: Ignatius Gallaher in "A Little Cloud" means to "marry money", with some rich German or Jews.
- In Dublin's Fair City: The setting, after all
- Meaningful Name
- Meddling Parents: the mother in "A Mother" behaves like her daughter's artist agent.
- Neat Freak: Mr. Duffy.
- Novella: The last story, The Dead, can be classified as such
- Rule of Symbolism
- Short Story: The work is a collection of short stories
- Snow Means Death: Probably the most famous example in Western culture.
- Stage Mom: "A Mother," again. It's a remarkably early example, and the historical context -- there really weren't many opportunities for professional women in Ireland at the time -- may make this an example of an Unbuilt Trope.