The Dubliners

James Joyce's The Dubliners is a short story sequence during which the reader is immersed into the lives of 19th century Dubliners. The major themes of the book include the repetition of daily life and death. These themes penetrate and play a role in every story. The people in the book never seem happy with the difficult and boring repetition that is their daily lives, and yet are unable to do anything about it. The thing that restrains them is not their ability to make change but instead their unwillingness to do so. For example in “Eveline,” a young woman is considering leaving home with a sailor named Frank to begin a new life in Buenos Aires, where “he would give her life, perhaps even love” (31), but at the last moment she becomes “passive, like a helpless animal” (32) and does not get on the boat with Frank. Frank has given her the ability to start a new life but Eveline is too afraid to take the action necessary to do so. This theme of helplessness can also be seen in “The Boarding House” where Mr Doran, a “thirty-four or thirty-five year” (52) old man, is essentially forced to marry the 19 year old daughter of his landlady, Polly, with whom he has been having an affair with. This is all despite the fact that “his instinct urged him to remain free, not to marry.” (54) Maybe Joyce is simply frowning upon sexual relations between two unmarried people. Or perhaps through these anecdotes of its people Joyce is instead attempting to characterize the city of Dublin; a city in which everyone seems to be miserable and yet no one makes any change or even effort towards change, a city that is paralyzed. The 9th line of the first chapter even alludes to this when the narrator states as he stares out of his window at Dublin, “Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis.”

Death ties into this theme of paralysis, which is evident in first chapter of the book. This chapter, “The Sisters,” explores the death of Father Flynn, an ex-priest accused of simony. Apparently not even death was escape for “poor James” (10), as the narrator recalls, “The fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin. But no…he was not smiling.” (8) It is also interesting to note the reaction of the child narrator to the death on page 6, “I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood.” The city seems to go on as if nothing has happened, and yet it revolves around death. The character Gabriel Conroy seems to be a microcosm of Joyce’s purpose for writing the book. The character attends a party hosted by his aunts during which he expresses his wish to leave Dublin and Ireland altogether. At the feast Gabriel gives a toast during which he addresses both death and the paralysis of daily life. It reads as follows, “Therefore I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralizing intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathers together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine.” (177) This proposal could not have come at a more opportune time for Joyce and his The Dubliners, as his book “dies” twenty pages later.

In conclusion The Dubliners was the portrayal of Ireland and the city of Dublin at the turn of the century by James Joyce and his literary genius.