Work record

Dubliners

James Joyce

1914 · Early 20th Century · Short Stories · English

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Abstract

Written: 1904-1907
Setting: Around 1900; Dublin
Author: James Joyce
Country: Ireland
Language: English
Genre: Short-story collection
Form: Fifteen short stories
Recommended: Grades 10–12 (Fifteen realist stories; some deal with drink, abuse and death.)

Design. An Irish writer in his twenties set out to write a moral history of his native city in a sequence of stories arranged from youth to old age and public affairs.

Youth. The early pieces, told by boys, show a priest's death, a frightening truant's afternoon, and a bazaar visit that ends in shame and disillusion.

Adulthood. Young women dream of escape and fail; clerks drink and lash out; a laundress is gently mocked; a solitary bank cashier learns too late of a woman's lonely death.

Public life. Campaign workers remember a fallen nationalist leader, a concert goes wrong, and friends try to reform a drunkard through a retreat sermon.

Finale. At a holiday dance a teacher learns that his wife has long mourned a youth who died for her, and snow seems to fall over the whole country.

Reading. Exact, ironic and compassionate, the collection is one of the great books of short fiction and a natural first step into Joyce for older students. Teachers should note references to drink and violence in a few stories. Students can trace the recurring idea of paralysis from the first page to the last, and compare the endings of the stories to see how often a small moment of insight replaces dramatic action.

Main characters

The boy of 'Araby': A boy infatuated with a neighbour's sister.
Eveline Hill: A young woman torn between duty and escape.
Farrington: A frustrated clerk who drinks and beats his son.
Maria: A kindly, lonely woman.
Gabriel Conroy: A literary schoolteacher and reviewer.
Gretta Conroy: A woman who remembers a boy who died for love.

Summary

Dubliners, published in 1914 after nearly a decade of disputes with publishers, is James Joyce's collection of fifteen short stories about the people of Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. Joyce said he wanted to write a chapter of the moral history of his country and chose Dublin because it seemed to him the centre of paralysis. The stories are arranged in the order of a life: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. In the first three, told by boy narrators, a child confronts the death of a priest in 'The Sisters', meets a disturbing stranger in 'An Encounter', and in 'Araby' goes to a bazaar to buy a gift for a girl and arrives too late, seeing himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity. In 'Eveline' a young woman prepares to elope to Buenos Aires but cannot board the ship. Later stories show clerks, lodging-house keepers, singers and political canvassers trapped in routine, drink, debt and small hypocrisies: 'Counterparts', in which a humiliated clerk beats his son; 'Clay', about a gentle laundress; 'A Painful Case', about a solitary man who rejects love and later learns of the woman's death; 'Ivy Day in the Committee Room', on the memory of Parnell; and 'Grace', a comic story of a drunken man's friends taking him to a retreat. Many stories turn on what Joyce called an epiphany, a sudden revelation of the truth of a moment. The collection ends with 'The Dead', its longest and greatest story. At a Christmas party given by his aunts, Gabriel Conroy delivers a speech and later learns that his wife Gretta still grieves for Michael Furey, a boy who loved her and died young. Gabriel realizes how little he has known her, and as snow falls over Ireland he feels a new sympathy for all the living and the dead. Joyce's precise, ironic and compassionate realism makes the book one of the great story collections in English and a fine introduction to his work.

Virtues in this work

Charity: Gabriel's final sympathy embraces all the living and the dead.
Fortitude: Many characters endure lives of quiet hardship.

Plot or Argument

Childhood
'The Sisters', 'An Encounter' and 'Araby'.
Adolescence
'Eveline', 'After the Race', 'Two Gallants' and 'The Boarding House'.
Maturity
'A Little Cloud', 'Counterparts', 'Clay' and 'A Painful Case'.
Public life
'Ivy Day in the Committee Room', 'A Mother' and 'Grace'.
The Dead
Gabriel Conroy's evening at his aunts' party and his night with Gretta.

Characters

The boy of 'Araby', narrator
A boy infatuated with a neighbour's sister.
Eveline Hill, heroine
A young woman torn between duty and escape.
Farrington, clerk in 'Counterparts'
A frustrated clerk who drinks and beats his son.
Maria, laundress in 'Clay'
A kindly, lonely woman.
Gabriel Conroy, protagonist of 'The Dead'
A literary schoolteacher and reviewer.
Gretta Conroy, Gabriel's wife
A woman who remembers a boy who died for love.

Lessons

Paralysis and epiphany
Joyce shows people trapped by habit who glimpse the truth in a sudden moment.
- Where does paralysis appear in the stories?
- What is the epiphany in 'Araby'?
- Do the characters act on what they learn?
Related across the library
- Poems: First, Second and Third Series, Lesson: Facing death calmly
  Facing death calmly. Many of the Time and Eternity poems imagine dying from the inside, sometimes with gentleness (The Chariot), sometimes with an interruption as small as a fly. Dickinson keeps returning to the moment when time meets eternity, testing faith by imagination.
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ch. 6
  The Caius syllogism: he cannot accept that the logic of mortality applies to himself.
- Wuthering Heights, Lesson: Childhood injury can organize generations
  Childhood injury can organize generations. Hindley's abuse and Heathcliff's degradation do not stay private. The second generation inherits the emotional and economic consequences of the first.
- No Exit and Three Other Plays, Lesson: Bad faith
  Bad faith. Sartre's term bad faith names the self-deception by which people deny their freedom, treating themselves as victims of circumstance or as fixed characters. Garcin's claim to be a hero, Estelle's insistence that she is a mere child of fortune, and Lizzie's surrender to the senator can all be read through it.
- The Story of a Soul, Epilogue
  The final months in the infirmary, the doctor's visits and remedies, her suffering and her death on 30 September 1897.
The ordinary as art
Joyce writes about ordinary people with great care.
- Why write about clerks and laundresses?
- What details make the characters real?
- What is gained by leaving things unsaid?
Related across the library
- Little Dorrit, Book the Second, Ch. 19
  The two brothers were before their Father; far beyond the twilight judgment of this world; high above its mists and obscurities The deaths of William and Frederick Dorrit on the same night.
- The Last Battle, Lesson: The end that is a beginning
  The end that is a beginning. Narnia does not simply fade; Aslan ends it, and those who love him pass through the door into a country more real than the one they lost. Lewis offers children a picture of death and the end of the world in which the deepest longing of the heart is answered and the story goes on.
- To the Lighthouse, Medical lens
  The novel's medical interest lies chiefly in grief and in how deaths are told. Time Passes reports, in brackets, Mrs Ramsay's sudden death, Prue's death from an illness connected with childbirth, and Andrew's death by a shell in France, and Part III is largely a study of mourning delayed by ten years. Smaller details record period medicine: the lighthouse keeper's boy is threatened with a tuberculous hip, and Mrs Ramsay knits the stocking for him; Mr Carmichael is said to take opium, which the children connect w...
- Theogony and Works and Days, Lesson: Order won out of conflict
  Order won out of conflict. The Theogony presents the cosmos as a story of succession: Heaven is overthrown by Cronos, and Cronos by Zeus, until Zeus ends the cycle by swallowing Metis and sharing honours among the gods. For Hesiod, the present order of the world is good because it rests on Zeus's victory and his fair distribution of rights.
- A Farewell to Arms, Book IV, Chapter XXXIV
  The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. Reunited with Catherine at Stresa, Frederic reflects on courage and on a world that kills the very good, the very gentle and the very brave.
'The Dead'
Gabriel's discovery changes his view of his wife and himself.
- What does Gabriel learn from Gretta?
- What does the snow symbolize?
- Is the ending hopeful?
Related across the library
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ch. 6
  The Caius syllogism: he cannot accept that the logic of mortality applies to himself.
- Essays: First Series (Self-Reliance and Other Essays), II. Self-Reliance, section on travel
  The traveller arrives in Naples and finds the sad self he fled; restlessness is called a symptom of a deeper unsoundness.
- Self-Pity, Lesson: How line breaks shape meaning
  How line breaks shape meaning. In free verse the line break is the poet's main tool of emphasis. Lawrence splits his first sentence after 'wild thing' and stretches the bird's death across one long line before the short echoing close.
- The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Lesson: The living and the dead
  The living and the dead. The survivors meet and are reconciled, and the abbess concludes that love links the living and the dead. Wilder offers consolation without certainty.
- Essays: First Series (Self-Reliance and Other Essays), II. Self-Reliance
  Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Emerson describes arriving in Naples to find the same sad self he hoped to leave at home.

Context

Dublin around 1900 was the capital of an Ireland still under British rule, poor, devoutly Catholic and divided over Home Rule after the fall of Parnell.

Composition

Joyce wrote the stories between 1904 and 1907; publishers objected to real names and coarse language, and the book appeared only in 1914, published by Grant Richards.

Reception

Little noticed at first, it is now considered one of the finest collections of short stories in English.

Isolation / Alienation Death / Mortality Identity Self Faith / Religion Home Exile

Comparisons

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Joyce's novel of a Dublin boyhood, which continues the stories' themes.
Mrs. Dalloway
Woolf's novel also turns on the inner life of a single day.

Quotes

“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

— James Joyce, Dubliners, Araby (Project Gutenberg #2814).Quote card

The Woman in White, First Epoch, The Story Begun by Walter Hartright, VI
She approached nearer—and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly! Walter's first sight of Marian Halcombe at Limmeridge, admiring her figure from behind before she turns; he soon finds her the most engaging person in the house.
The Beast in the Jungle, Chapter II
What it had come to was that he wore a mask painted with the social simper, out of the eye-holes of which there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features The narrator describes the gap between Marcher's courteous public life and his inner detachment, a gap only May has seen.
The Complete Poems, Summary
The Complete Poems of Walt Whitman gathers the evolving work of a poet who made the self expansive enough to contain a democracy. The center is Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855 and revised across multiple editions until Whitman's death. In poems such as Song of Myself, I Sing the Body Electric, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, the Calamus cluster, Drum-Taps and When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, Whitman invents a poetic voice that is intimate, public, bodily, mystical...
The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, Chapter X: The Consciousness of Self
a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him_ and carry an image of him in their mind The definition of the social self; James adds that to wound any one of these images is to wound the person.
The Beast in the Jungle, Chapter I
You said you had had from your earliest time, as the deepest thing within you, the sense of being kept for something rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible, that was sooner or later to happen to you At Weatherend May repeats to Marcher the confidence he gave her ten years earlier at Sorrento, which he had forgotten.

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

— James Joyce, Dubliners, The Dead (Project Gutenberg #2814).Quote card

The Agricola and the Germania, Source
many of Rome's best citizens which were perpetrated under the reign of Nero Being himself a senator he felt that he was not entirely guiltless of the crimes which were committed and in his Agricola we find him giving expression to this feeling in the following words Our own hands dragged Helvidius to prison ourselves were tortured with the spectacle of Mauricus and Rusticus and sprinkled with the innocent blood of Senecio In he was elected to the consulship as successor to Virginius Rufus who died during his ter...
The Last of the Mohicans, Chapter XXXII
I am thine; do with me as thou seest best! Ordered by Magua to choose between his wigwam and his knife, Cora kneels and lifts her arms toward heaven.
The Castle of Otranto, Full Text
the reader s attention relaxed The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the conduct of the piece The characters are well drawn and still better maintained Terror the author s principal engine prevents the story from ever languishing and it is so often contrasted by pity that the mind is kept up in a constant vicissitude of interesting passions Some persons may perhaps think the characters of the domestics too little serious for the general cast of the story but besides their opposition to the princi...
The Annals of Imperial Rome, Source
Produced by Anne Soulard Tiffany Vergon Charles Aldarondo and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team THE REIGN OF TIBERIUS OUT OF THE FIRST SIX ANNALS OF TACITUS WITH HIS ACCOUNT OF GERMANY AND LIFE OF AGRICOLA By Tacitus Translated By Thomas Gordon And Edited By Arthur Galton Alme Sol curru nitido diem qui Promis et celas aliusque et idem Nasceris possis nihil urbe Roma Visere maius CONTENTS INTRODUCTION THE ANNALS BOOK I THE ANNALS BOOK II THE ANNALS BOOK III THE ANNALS BOOK IV THE ANNALS BOOK V THE ANNALS B...
The Odes and Carmen Saeculare, Book I, Ode 11 (Tu ne quaesieris)
Seize the present; trust to-morrow e'en as little as you may. The end of the advice to Leuconoe not to consult astrologers: the carpe diem ode.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The repeated idea of paralysis.
The boy's journey to the bazaar in 'Araby'.
Eveline's choice at the quay.
Gabriel's speech at the party.
The snow at the end of 'The Dead'.

Key terms and names

Epiphany: A sudden revelation of the truth of a moment, Joyce's term borrowed from the Church.
Paralysis: Joyce's word for the spiritual stagnation he saw in Dublin.
Free indirect style: Third-person narration that takes on a character's way of speaking.
Parnell: Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist leader who fell from power in 1890.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension How are the stories arranged?
Comprehension Why doesn't Eveline leave?
Comprehension Who was Michael Furey?
Interpretation What is the boy's epiphany in 'Araby'?
Interpretation What does Gabriel understand at the end of 'The Dead'?
Big Question Can people change the habits that trap them?

Faith Connections

Ecclesiastes 1:2 (Scripture)
Vanity of vanities; all is vanity, echoing 'Araby'.
John 11:25 (Scripture)
I am the resurrection, and the life; compare the end of 'The Dead'.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: By recording ordinary lives with exact detail, Joyce reveals a city's spiritual paralysis and the moments when its people glimpse the truth.

Rhetorical device: epiphany. Each story builds toward a quiet moment of revelation rather than a dramatic climax.

Debate: Resolved: that 'The Dead' ends in hope rather than despair.

Memory Work

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.
Araby. The famous closing sentence of 'Araby'.

Writing Prompts

Essay: How does Joyce use the setting of Dublin to shape his characters?

Comparison with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Compare the boy of 'Araby' with Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Creative Prompts

Essay
Choose three stories and explain how each ends with an epiphany.
Fiction
Write a short story about an ordinary day that ends with a small revelation.
Classroom
Map the stories on a map of Dublin.