![]() ![]() We catch glimpses of slums, as in "An Encounter," when the two young schoolboys see poor children without fully comprehending what their ragged clothes imply about the small children's home conditions and prospects in life. His misery is such that he ends up spending far more than he can afford on booze. Farrington of "Counterparts" stays in a hateful job because he has no other options. Lenehan in "Two Gallants" sees no future for himself, and sits down to a miserable supper consisting only of peas and ginger beer. ![]() Joyce usually evokes it through detail: the plum cake Maria busy in "Clay," for example, is a humble treat that costs her a good chunk of her salary. Poverty is one of the most pervasive themes of the novel. Joyce's portrait of Dublin life moves not only across a small range of classes (the poor and the middle class) but also across the different periods of a human life. ![]() ![]() It is also the richest of the stories, weaving together many of the previous themes of the book. "The Dead," the final tale of the collection, is nearly three times as long as the average story in Dubliners. "Araby," "An Encounter," and " Eveline," for example, are fairly simple and short tales. Although this is a broad generalization, the stories also tend to increase in complexity. Dubliners is roughly organized into a framework chronicling a human life: we begin with younger protagonists, and then move forward into stories with increasingly aged men and women. ![]()
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