Three Stories from the Dubliners - Essay Example

Three Stories from the Dubliners Dubliners, written by James Joyce, is a collection of fifteen short stories dealing with different themes of human life and existence. This thesis is aimed at presenting the themes of paralysis, entrapments and isolation with special focus over three selected stories, namely, Araby, Eveline, and A Painful Case. James Joyce is considered as one of the most important figures of the modernist revolution in the field of literature. The short stories of Dubliners individually represent separate cosmos of their own, as they deal with different people, different themes and different perspectives. Despite differences in all these stories, the reader finds that at a particular point all these stories are interlinked, though the link is never sequential. Each of these stories deals with lives of common people, their expectation from life, relations, and their dissatisfaction. In each of the stories, the author has dealt with different themes of life and conjointly Dubliners represent a complete cosmos of he contemporary life in Ireland. The themes of paralysis, entrapments and isolation have recurred in all these stories. Joyce, with the purpose of portraying the true picture of human lives and their plight, has focused over intricate details of the life of an individual as well as provided accurate details of the psychological condition of an individual. Equal focus over both these aspects provides a reader a sense of completion as he goes through the stories. Themes of paralysis, entrapments and isolation that Joyce has reflected through the characters and stories of Dubliners, is common in the lives of every individual, living in this society. While reading Dubliners, a reader identifies himself with the characters. At the same time he identifies his plight with plight of the character, living in a modern society. Henceforth, appeal of such themes become universal and this sense of universality is reflected in the best manner through the three stories that are main subjects of discussion in this thesis. If one attempts to find any kind of sequential connection among the stores of Dubliners that would be a futile attempt. Even from the perspective of aesthetic appeal these stories are quite different but in one sense all these stories are waved together that they deal with life of the capital of Ireland, Dublin. Joyce, through these stories, unveils various emotional perspectives of common residents of this city. These stories were written at such a point of time when Irish nationalism reached it point of culmination. A quest to search for identity and purpose of the nation was gradually becoming conspicuous and at the same time this sense of nationalism received a greater boost due to different types of cultural, historical and philosophical influences. Effects of such influence became clear in the lifestyle and social outlook of the citizens and the stories of the Dubliners have perfectly portrayed such change of approach to life through expectations, sorrows, happiness and angst of protagonists. Dubliners from a board perspective, can said to be, a metaphorical representation of a person’s life, starting from his childhood to maturity. I have chosen three stories, namely, Araby, Eveline and A Painful Case that will help us to understand various perspective and technical aspects that Joyce has used in the Dubliners. Araby deals with futile love story of an adolescent boy, who falls in lover with his friend’s sister. The story deals his fantasies, his quest to worship and idealize his love and his frustration due to the futility that he finally experiences. In Eveline, we see though Eveline, the protagonist young women has a lot of ambition in her mind and always wanted to escape from drudgeries of Dublin, even after receiving the opportunity, refuse to leave her motherland with a sailor. The final story, A Painful Case, shows the reader problems of mature life and how a mature person suffers pain of deprivation. In this story, we see that Mr. Duffy makes himself responsible for the death of Mrs. Sinico, as four years back he refused her love. Thus, it is understandable, though each of the stories deal with separate themes but they essentially deal with the problems of human existence and valuable emotions of their lives in the contemporary time. Each of these three stories end with the protagonists left alone, emotionally paralyzed, entrapped and isolated from the rest of the world. Surprisingly, though the backdrop of the stories is Joyce’s contemporary Dublin society, but in their appeal they have become universal. Here lies the mastery of Joyce that he, like all the great artists, has understood the essence of existence that remains unchanged irrespective of time and perfectly depicts that through Dubliners. At this point, protagonists of the stories become everyman and Dubliners emerges as mirror of the society. The story of ‘Araby’ highlights the contradiction between reality and illusion and illustrates the transformation of innocence to the path of realization and disillusionment as a phenomenon that occurs in a child’s boyhood. The story takes the help of a bleak setting contrasted by a simple dream or illusionary craze of the young boy to show him the stark reality of Dublin’s life that is very different from the world of is own making. The setting of the story plays an important role in highlighting the theme. Araby is a market place and the center of the plot of this story. The fact that Araby is almost closed with only a few shops still open shows a ray of hope or light in the life of a boy who is used to play in the dark alleys of the city. The boy is tempted to adhere to this hopeful dream and falls for it too. ‘Araby’ – the market place is the medium via which the boy realizes the illusion that had taken over him. The first words spoken by the girl of his dream was also about ‘Araby’, giving the reader the assumption that it will be a mythological place that he can escape from reality and his harsh environment. However, it practically leads him to disillusionment and the boy’s realization of the real world in contrast to his own world of dream. The elements present in the narration are adolescence, public life of Dublin at that time and maturity that dawn after a journey through innocence. The narrator describes how the city and the surroundings had eaten into the health of the young boy’s life and contributed towards creating the person that he was. The story opens with the lines “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers School set the boys free” (Joyce, 2008, 27). Ironically, even though they were free from school, even their play did not give them the desired pleasure, for it was an equally dull world, where not even play brought any refreshment for the children. All these descriptions of dullness actually create the backdrop against which the boy took resort of imagination larger than life and hence encounters a surprising disillusionment. The antagonist in the story is the culture and life of Dublin, which has a significant role in shaping the boy’s mind along with the other inhabitants in the city. Joyce refers to Dublin as “indeed sterile”. This coaxes the innocent mind to seek shelter to a world of his own making or imagination where the boy seeks peace and happiness that the reality could not give him. In “Araby”, the author focuses on character rather than on plot to expose the ironical evidences present in self-deception. On one hand, "Araby" is a story of a boy’s search for perfection or his dream. The search is in vain but gives way to an inner self-realization and an initial step into manhood. From another dimension, the story encompasses a grown mans recollected experience. Symbolic images draw the boy as a lonely individual who is aware of the bleakness of the surroundings. Dullness that surrounds him, he wishes to reject it silently and tries to find solace in his world of fantasy. During the first reading, the story might seem to be about the love story or first crush of a young boy who craves to gain the attention of the girl, ‘Mangan’s sister’ whom he adores in his mind as “Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side”. (Joyce, 2008, 28) The boy simply could not get her out of her mind – “At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read.” (Joyce, 2008, 30) After the time when the girl spoke to him asking him to visit ‘Araby’, it was as if “The syllables of the word ‘Araby’ were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me” (Joyce, 2008, 30) . The idea of casting an enchantment somewhat prepares the contrast image that is eventually revealed in the end to make the boy realize the truth about the world where he lived. Presence of the girl at his emotional level makes him feel so charmed and influenced that fulfilling her simple wishes has become the most important ambition of his life. He tells his uncle and aunt that he wanted to visit the bazaar but his uncle came back late. Joyce here has intentionally depicted the boy’s process of waiting in a dark room. James Joyce refers to light in the story especially to denote the ray of hope. Here the absence of light during the time of his wait for his uncle clearly express that he has failed to escape from the dullness (absence of light) of his daily life. The girl of who had intoxicated his vision throughout the day was a ray of light for him to find a way of rejuvenating his spirit and achieving happiness for the moment when he is with the girl’s thoughts and following her about or watching her. Finally, when he reaches Araby, he develops the realization about life dawns on him. He felt let down and an emptiness takes over him and he is assured that he would feel that emptiness continuously – he is disillusioned as “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce, 2008, 33). The way the disillusionment happened and why it took place is not very clearly mentioned. One reason could be that as he compared the girl at the bazaar to the girl he dreamt of he found them similar and nothing special about his dream and like most other people it was merely physical attraction that actually made him look like a greedy beast to himself. This also took away the ray of light from him and brought him back to stark reality of emptiness and the bleak surroundings that he originally belonged. In ‘Eveline’, the whole story mainly focuses over “twilight thoughts of young woman who has consented to an elopement in order to escape her impoverished and stultifying life in Dublin.” (Attridge, 1990, 4) The very opening scene makes it clear through the expression of Eveline that she is torn between two existences. On one hand she wishes to fly away from the mundane existence of Dublin and on the other hand her heart is telling her to stay amidst her nostalgia, her familiar world and her acquaintances. “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.” (Joyce, 2008, 24)- It is clear from the first line of the story that though she is desperate to leave the city in order to find a better existence, but she is receiving the premonition that she is actually getting read to head towards her doom. Standing by the window she is recollecting one by one all the images from her memory and most conspicuous among them are of course those that are associated with his childhood. “The children of the avenue used to play together in that field- the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns …she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was too grown up….Still they seemed to have been rather happy then.” (Joyce, 2008, 34) - Alongside these good, golden memories she also recollects about tragic occurrences of her life, the death of her mother, attitude of father changing towards them, death and separation from close friends and she realizes, ‘Everything changes.’ These are the small narrative techniques of Joyce but in the course of the stories they carry huge significance. Through these two words the author at once touches heart of the reader and makes him realize that change is an essential aspect of life that cannot be denied. These subtle uses of emotional depictions are not very remarkable but perhaps those are the most remarkable artistic touch of Joyce’s craftsmanship. These are certain experiences that all human beings face at the crucial junction of their lives, as they more mature with their experience. In his stories Joyce never uses straight approach as if he is trying to convey certain facts. He always has given complete scope to the reader to interpret the whole situation in his own ways, so that he can identify himself with the character. Slowly he comes up with information from the life of the protagonist and the reader effortlessly gets involved within the whole situation. In this context Derek Attridge has remarked, “…the hints and presuppositions that we are invited to elaborate on, the rhythm of mental deliberation that propels the narrative forward, and – our present concern – the controlled language that through its very spareness posses a hair-trigger suggestiveness.” (Attridge, 1990, 5) It is this narrative style that tells finally that Eveline is trying to elope to a new country where she will get married but she realizes “…in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that.” (Joyce, 2008, 35) Youth is such a phase of human life that is completely oriented through impulsive approaches and in Eveline’s case there is no exception. Being a woman she faces the same situation that her mother has also faced but her sense of independency forces her for a refuge. She finally finds it through Frank and she wanted to “Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her.” (Joyce, 2008, 38) In the beginning it has already been mentioned that Dubliners, was written at that period of time when the sense of independence was at the pick among the citizens. Perhaps in this story Joyce tried to depict certain elements of it through the character of Eveline and her refusal to leave her land. Eveline tried to take herself away from her cultural and social backdrop with the dream that she would be happy but more she reaches close to her dreams, she starts realizing that it will be futile existence without Ireland and thus, she finally refuses to leave, “he rushed beyond the barrier and called her to follow….She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.” (Joyce, 2008, 38) Though she decides to retain in her dull existence in Dublin but she will remain detached from her existence and she is not associated with no one, who can share her expectations as well as emotional requirements. Hence, Eveline remains just a simple girl, suffering from her emotional paralysis, entrapment and isolation. The final story ‘A Painful Case’ starts with a note of indifference, “Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious.” (Joyce, 2008, 99) It is the excellent narrative technique of Joyce that gives readers the impression that Mr. Duffy has compelled himself into an alien existence. ‘A complete stock of Wordsworth’ clearly gives a reader the impression that the protagonist is longing to escape from the mundane to perfect existence. At this point again the same theme of emotional paralysis, entrapment and isolation recurs. Such a figure can be compared with Somerset Maugham’s Wilson and it will not be an exaggeration if these kinds of characters can be termed as ‘modern hermits’. Accidentally, at a park, she meets Mrs. Sinico, whose face, “…must have been handsome, had remained intelligent.” (Joyce, 2008, 101) They go on meeting with each other more regularly with the progress of time and they gradually started “finding that they were compelled to meet stealthily.” (Joyce, 2008, 101) Finally Mrs. Sinico falls in love with him and at the same time Joyce also provides the reader with certain information in the form of signs from Mr.Duffy that he understands Mr. Duffy is no less in love with her. He denies to her as well as to himself about such feeling and discourages her from being involved in any kind of emotional attachment with him. One hand, the protagonist is in love with the lady but on the other hand he is so occupied with the idea of his isolation that he denies his spontaneous reaction for her. The author has depicted small incidents and details in such a way that clearly elucidates psychological dilemma of the protagonist, yet any clear hint is absent. After four years he receives the news of Mrs. Sinico’s death in a train accident and Mr. Duffy could not stop himself thinking that he is the main cause of her sad demise. Going though the whole story the reader does not find any such change of tone into the narrative pattern that would shock him until he reaches the final part. Joyce has taken assistance of newspaper to provide Mr. Duffy as well as the reader, the news of her death. Even the process of introduction to this news happens in a very everyday manner. The whole narrative is so normal yet spontaneous that leads the reader to visualize the whole situation. Unlike Araby, this story does not contain so fertile use of symbolism, nor does it have overlapping of past and present like that of ‘Eveline’. The main asset of the story is its simplistic yet powerful narrative. The apparent indifference of Mr. Duffy’s character is reflected through the narrative style of the story. Generally it is the feature of maturity to deal with life sometimes with patience or else, with passive approach. Even after getting the news of Mrs. Sinico’s death there is no such apparent change in Mr. Duffy’s feature but authoritative exposure of the tremendous undercurrent of emotion and guilt feeling gives clear impression to the reader that for the rest of his life Mr. Duffy would identify himself as guilty of not “spoken to her of what he held sacred.” (Joyce, 2008, 106) References 1. Attridge, D. 2004, The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce, Cambridge University Press 2. Joyce, J. 2008, Dubliners, BiblioBazaar, LLC Read More