The Dubliners Literary Analysis
3-2 Short Paper: Dubliners Literary Analysis
Written during in the early years of the 20th century, Dubliners was composed by James Joyce during a time of searching for Ireland as the condition of the nation reflected the Modernist theme of the search for identity and purpose. Such a theme appealed to the times and the readers of these times as they too found themselves searching for identity and meaning in life while continuously influenced by limitation and tradition. As a collection of short stories, each part of Dubliners reflected different aspects of life, yet held similarities all together in this search for identity while becoming restricted by society and tradition, with one such story being “Eveline”.
The story of conflict between love and duty, “Eveline” follows a woman of the same name, Eveline, and her struggles to decide her course of action between running away with the man she loves and remaining home to attend to her promised duties. This story heavily deals with the ideas of escape and the identity conflicts that come with it. Eveline ponders
She had consented to go away, to leave her home, Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her… What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps,” (Joyce)
Considering her options when confronted with the idea of leaving. She finds pleasure and happiness in the idea of escape from a mundane house and an abusive father, yet questions the security of the idea. Ever still, Eveline finds herself deciding to try and leave, yet is again faced with a crisis regarding purpose. She attributes a great deal of her need to stay to her past, and uses this to better assess where her future should bring her. Yet she still remains conflicted in her desires, even turning to seek answers from a higher power “She felt her cheek pale and cold and, out of the maze of distress, she prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty,” (Joyce). Such uncertainty reflects the struggles Eveline holds within her identity, but also exhibits the lead up to her epiphany, an idea utilized by Joyce for each of the stories published within Dubliners. Specifically, this epiphany lies in social paralysis, as demonstrated by Eveline in her decisions. Despite her desires to leave, dreams of escape and decision to do so, in the end, she finds herself too frozen to leave, too set in the past to truly seek out a life of her own. As Eugene O’Brien points out, in Lacanian terms, Eveline is rooted in her own personal and social identity as framed through her family, making her position far worse off and repeating the tragic patterns of her mother (O’Brien). Her struggle for identity, in this case, is rooted in her fears of leaving behind what she already knows.
As mentioned previously, “Eveline” ties in closely with the rest of Dubliners stories for a variety of reasons, despite their seemingly relation-less plots. Each story focuses on an inner struggle for the characters often dealing with social paralysis, desire for escape and the identity struggle that accompanies this. Eveline finds her identity rooted in her past and this influences her desires to avoid the risk of escape. In a similar vein, the boys from “An Encounter” dream of escape from boredom of their home, yet find themselves restricted only to their imagination, acknowledging “But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad,” (Joyce). In “The Boarding House”, Mr. Dorain longs to escape from an engagement of which he desires no part, yet submits to what he believes muist be done “He longed to ascend through the roof and fly away to another country where he would never again hear of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by step,” (Joyce) rooting his identity in submission and tradition. Each of these characters find their identity rooted in their society and, as a result, suffers from the paralysis that prevents their escape from the tedium of which they live. His various references to tradition and the inability of characters to step away from this tradition to achieve what they believe to desire. This reflects the identity alienation often present within Modernist works. Furthermore, the way the story is told, in progression as that of a lifespan with each protagonist becoming older than the next, reflects the human condition in the idea that such struggles are not limited to one age or one gender, but are a matter existing within all walks of life and likening to the aging of a person in its own composure, putting a unique spin in connecting all the stories in their searches. In telling the story in such an ordered way, Joyce appeals to the struggles of Ireland at the time of this piece’s writing, emphasizing the challenge against tradition while also rooting the issue of preservation of the same within the stories.
In writing Dubliners, James Joyce elaborated on the Modernist theme of identity, bringing to light the struggles of an Irish people to grow and let go of tradition in a changing world. In doing so, Joyce appealed to the reader’s own senses of loss and need to search for meaning as time marched forward. Joyce’s success in the exploration of identity in these stories revolves around the specific callings to institutions in which a reader may find their own realms of representation within the story, allowing them a look into themselves as well as the character, (Murphy). In his exploration of identity and escape, Joyce reflects his own society, an Ireland in search of identity and meaning, and places a modernist emphasis on it by appealing to the reader’s senses of identity in reflection of the characters and the nation’s presence.
Works Cited
Joyce, James. “DUBLINERS.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dubliners, by James Joyce, Sept. 2001, www.gutenberg.org/files/2814/2814-h/2814-h.htm.
Murphy, Sean P. "Subjectivity and Totality in Dubliners." Short Story Criticism, edited by Jelena O. Krstovic, vol. 118, Gale, 2009. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/apps/doc/H1420088616/LitRC?u=nhc_main&sid=LitRC&xid=8f7b2bff. Accessed 21 Jan. 2020. Originally published in James Joyce and Victims: Reading the Logic of Exclusion, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003, pp. 32-72.
O’Brien, Eugene. "‘Because She Was a Girl’: Gender Identity and the Postcolonial in James Joyce’s ‘Eveline’." Short Story Criticism, edited by Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 172, Gale, 2013. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.snhu.edu/apps/doc/H1420110569/LitRC?u=nhc_main&sid=LitRC&xid=78c6707c. Accessed 21 Jan. 2020. Originally published in Studies, vol. 93, no. 370, 2004, pp. 201-215.
