Irish Short Stories Analysis

Gish Jen’s “Who’s Irish” tells the story of a sixty-eight-year-old Chinese immigrant and her struggle to accept other cultures different from her own. The protagonist has been living in the United States for a while but she is still critical of other cultures and ethnicities, such as her son-in-law’s Irish family and the American values in which her daughter insists on applying while raising the protagonist’s granddaughter. The main character finds it very hard to accept the American way of disciplining and decides to implement her own measures when babysitting her granddaughter Sophie. When the main character’s daughter finds out that she has been spanking Sophie she asks her mother to move out of the house and breaks any further contact

His immersion into the culture of Northern Ireland made him less of an outsider in terms of ability to gain information, but he still could use his outsider perspective in analyzing what he obtained. Conroy’s choice to live in the ghetto was just the beginning of what made him equipped to tell the story of Ireland. Equally important to immersing oneself in Belfast is having the ability to not take sides, or favor one group or ideology or person over the other, a challenge that Conroy undertook.

Dubliners (1914), by James Joyce (1882-1941) is a collection of short stories representing his home city at the start of the 20th century. Joyce 's work ‘was written between 1904 and 1907 ' (Haslam and Hooper, 2012, p. 13). The novel consists of fifteen stories; each one unfolds lives of the different lower middle-strata. Joyce wanted to convey something definite about Dublin and Irish society.

Identity is pivotal to the story and holds its own innate power, but what is even more pivotal is that the Irish do not necessarily all share the same views. The Irish find their history very important because it is the foundation of the language. Hugh says, “It is not the literal past, the ‘facts’ of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language” (88). It is evident then that Hugh finds the historical meanings of

Chapter 4 ends with a rather sad note, after being given an anecdote on the people of Ireland and their history with potatoes, Bill Bryson end with an objective way. Laying the facts of how the Irish could have been saved, in an almost ironic way, if it only they had focused on helping each other than relying on the countries that had look upon them for eating such an ‘unholy’ food. The mood becomes sad to the reader, but Bryson gives the facts unbiased and the tone becomes pitiful. Having objectivity at the end made the chapter more appealing emotionally. Due to the fact that the famine experienced by the Irish could have been solved, if they had just paid more attention to their people, instead of focusing on the potatoes that had failed

In “Who’s Irish”, Gish Jen demonstrates a family that has Chinese root and American culture at the same time. The main character is a fierce grandmother who lives in with her daughter’s family, and then ironically forced to move out because of her improper behavior during she raises her granddaughter. The author uses some unpleasant language and contents to describe the situation, which are effectively demonstrate how difficult and how struggle for people who lives in the gap between two different cultures. I can’t say who is right or who is wrong, but feel sorry for the grandmother.

Are you ready to analyze three stories? Yes? Awesome! No? Too bad, because here we go! The three stories in question are The Leap by Louise Erdrich, The Contents of a Dead Man’s Pockets by Jack Finney, and Ambush by Tim O’Brien. The authors of these stories use aspects of their stories to shape the plot, show the theme, and to change the views and opinions of the characters in the stories.

    In the early twentieth century, Ireland, and more specifically Dublin, was a place defined by class distinctions. There were the wealthy, worldly upper-class who owned large, stately townhouses in the luxurious neighborhoods and the less fortunate, uneducated poor who lived in any shack they could afford in the middle of the city. For the most part, the affluent class was Protestant, while the struggling workers were overwhelmingly Catholic. These distinctions were the result of nearly a century of disparity in income, education, language, and occupation, and in turn were the fundamental bases for the internal struggle that many of Joyce's characters feel.

In William Trevor’s short story ‘Beyond the Pale’, the reader is presented with a text that seethes with the angst of a writer whose country’s Colonial past has been gnawing on his bones. Although there is nothing unusual in this (especially in Irish writing), Trevor manages to fumble the ball in the course of his didactic strategy and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory: what should have been a successful indictment of British Colonial Rule in Ireland becomes nothing more than the grumbling of an intelligent writer who cannot negotiate his patriotic feelings.

James Joyce wrote Dubliners to portray Dublin at the turn of the early 20th century. In Dubliners, faith and reason are represented using dark images and symbols. James Joyce uses these symbols to show the negative side of Dublin. In “The Sisters,” “The Boarding House,” and “The Dead” dark is expressed in many ways. James Joyce uses the light and dark form of symbolism in his imagination to make his stories come to life.

The tragedy that is “The Death of Aífe’s only Son” is described by Gantz to be “more international than Iris in feel”, yet “distinctively Irish” in the title (Gantz, p.147). In this case, such a text fits well in a course of Celtic mythology and with the other texts we have read in class because analyzation in style and events may show the transformation and effect of outside influence in the Irish storytelling tradition, and may open a path to a clearer view of the differences in character of the Irish peoples of different time periods. One debatably outside influence may be the idea of the role of fate in these tales.

O’Brien challenges the patriarchal, conservative Ireland at this time through the theme of sexuality. From the beginning O’Brien describes the protagonist’s lover with various religious references throughout the short story to mock the contemporary Irish ideals, “He had what I call a very religious smile” and “He kept his hands joined all the time as if they were being put to prayer” (O’Brien 9). By intertwining religious imagery with her male lover O’Brien represents him as a fatherly figure, something to be revered and obeyed and the protagonist as a child; “It was the only time our roles were reversed. He was not my father. I became his

It is a fact, with few exceptions, that a person’s manner of speaking identifies a lot about him or her including education and upbringing, and often his or her place in society. James Joyce’s “Two Gallants” takes the reader on a stroll around Dublin with Lenehan and Corley and we can eavesdrop on their conversation as they make plans for their “big evening.” Joyce’s use of slang helps the reader understand who Lenehan and Corley are. It helps reveal their age; education; feelings about others; relationship with each other; and class. Overall, Joyce shows us the hopelessness of two working class young men living by their wits and their interaction with a darker side of life – gambling, prostitution, and stealing. Lehehan and

This paper examines the back ground of how James Joyce became a writer. In this paper we will learn about his Irish Identity. It will provide a new approach for understanding the dramatic development of Joyce’s oeuvre and how he had contributed to the modernist avant-garde, which he was one of the most influential but yet important authors. Some of his childhood travels to other countries, money-making schemes, and the death of his mother. His struggles of growing up without his mother between France and the Ireland there is a long history. I will touch a little on his religion of Irish Catholicism. It rejected his attitude and sexual morality that is why he left the Catholic church family, hating it fervently. It looks as if most of his life revolved around his story of Dublin, Ireland. James

Fascinating is one way of describing Irish Literature. All Irish literature seem to have similar characteristics. First, Irish literature always takes place in Ireland and is about Irish citizens or those with Irish heritage. If one does not know about the Irish, it is not always possible to understand the Irish by reading Irish literature because the authors? definition is what they believe to be Irish. Irish playwright, John Millington Synge, born in 1871 in rural Rathfarnham, outside Dublin Ireland died at age 37 in 1909, authored ?Playboy of the Western World? and award-winning, Irish playwright, author and poet, Sebastian Barry, born in 1955 in Dublin authored among others, ?The Secret Scripture? are not only similar in heritage, embodying the characteristics of Irish literature in these two works, written one hundred plus years apart, with similar genres?satirical tragedy and tragedy, but also show the strong influence of feminism, social expectations, and religion. The personal effect was greater for ?The Secret Scripture? as characters and events outlined in this book relate to instances in the life of my aunt, mother and