Essay on James Joyce's Dubliners - Anger and Misery in Counterparts

Like a shovel to dirt as a pen to paper. In “Digging,” Seamus Heaney uses specific elements such as diction, and imagery to convey his meaning that children don’t always want to be like their past generations of men.

It has been almost a month since I have last documented. After we left Independence Rock we were off to the South Pass. It was the harshest part of the trip so far, and we all learned how important water is and how we should not take it for granted. All the way to South Pass it was all sand and no shade. It was scorching hot and, on some days, got to or went over 100 degrees. After about a week and a half we got to South Pass, and then started our journey up the Rocky Mountains.

How much does an artist’s life affect the art they produce? One’s art certainly can be an expression of one’s surroundings and in this manner the surroundings are woven like a thread into their body of work. Seamus Heaney, born and raised in Northern Ireland, has grown up with many strong influences in his life that are visible in his poetry. As Robert Buttel claims in his article on Seamus Heaney “the imprint of this poet’s origins is indelibly fixed in his work” (180). Living in the “bogland” as Heaney has described Northern Ireland left an imprint on his poems, as he often depicts the lush green countryside and pastoral scenes of his youth. However, he also acknowledges his modern society.

In the beginning the author describes how she became to know the protagonist, Ethan Frome. The narrator stated that Ethan was “the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man”. This expression is very ironic. One can tell the beauty he once had, although he has had a hard life that has physically took a toll on him. “It was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.” The narrator is describing his appearance and the way Ethan walks. The fact the narrortar states that he has a careless and powerful looks contradicts the end of the statement. At the end of the statement, states that he walks abnormally, as if he is in pain or have some sort of physically problem that does not allow him to walk correctly. Irony is also found in the very in of this short story. Ethan and Mattie believed they loved each other so much that it was

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.

The setting of the story, Dublin, has been written in such a way that only

    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.

Philip Larkin (1922-1895) was an English novelist and poet, in 1955 he became a Liberian at the University of Hull. He would stay on working at the University until his death in 1895. During the first few months of his time working at the University he stayed in various bedsits, after this he moved into a flat which appears to be the same flat in which he wrote his poem “High Windows” which was first published in 1974. Clive James commented on this poem by saying: “The total impression of High Windows is of despair made beautiful.”1 The speaker of “High Windows” is most likely Larkin, although he is hiding behind a mask, not truly confirming his identity as he narrates on what he sees looking out of his window. “High Windows” was written in London during the time known as ‘The Summer of Love,’ this is when Bands such as ‘The Beatles’ brought around the craze of free thinkers, free love and drug use; no longer was the topic of sex whispered in the shadows.

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.

James Joyce’s book of short stories entitled Dubliners examines feminism and the role of women in Irish society. The author is ahead of his time by bringing women to the forefront of his stories and using them to show major roles and flaws in Irish society, specifically in “Eveline” and “The Boarding House”. James Joyce portrays women as victims who are forced to assume a leading and somewhat patriarchal role in their families. He uses them to show the paralysis of his native land Ireland, and the disruption in social order that is caused by the constant cycle of abuse that he finds commonplace in Ireland. Joyce is trying to end the Victorian and archaic view of

James Joyce’s Dubliners is a compilation of many short stories put together to convey the problems in Ireland during that time. Many of his characters are searching for some kind of escape from Dublin, and this is a reoccurring theme throughout the stories. In the story “Little Cloud,” the main character, Little Chandler, feels the need for both an escape from Dublin and also from his normal everyday life. Gabriel, the main character in Joyce’s final story of the book, “The Dead,” desires a different form of escape than Little Chandler. He desires to escape his aunts’ party, and also at times, Dublin society. Although the stories

Human beings yearn for better lives, often through escape. The main characters in James Joyce's Dubliners are no exception. Characters such as Eveline in "Eveline" and Little Chandler in "A Little Cloud" have a longing to break free of Dublin's entrapment and pursue their dreams. Nevertheless, these characters never seem to achieve a better state; rather, they are paralyzed and unable to embark on their journey of self-fulfillment. Joyce employs this motif of the empty promise of escape and its subsequent frustration through one's own responsibilities and purely physical acts. Through this, Joyce interconnects the different Dubliners stories to show that escaping life in a place as paralyzing as Dublin is no easy task on the individual.

Dubliners by James Joyce is a collection of stories centered around Joyce’s intentions to write the moral history of Dublin’s paralysis. Although paralysis seems to be the main theme in Dubliners, another motif comes across in the pages of the stories. As if all of the mental, physical, and emotional problems weren’t enough, many of the characters in Dubliners are alcoholics. Joyce utilizes the character of the drunk in many of the stories in Dubliners; hardly a story skips a mention of a drink. The negative effects of alcohol occur again and again through the collection of stories. For the most part, men are brought down by their addiction to alcohol and their inability to control themselves when they are drunk. In Dubliners, the characters seek their own desires, face obstacles that frustrate them, and ultimately give in to their need to consume alcohol. With Dubliners, James Joyce brings attention to the different issues that consuming alcohol caused in early 20th century Ireland using three particular stories; “Counterparts”, “Grace” and “Ivy Day in the Committee Room”.

The Victorian era was a time of contradiction. While England lamented its traditional values, it also saw the potential for a better quality of life through industrialization. Tennyson presents this paradox, between traditional acceptance of life and a progressive need for enhancement, in his poems "Ulysses" and "The Lady of Shalott". Both of these poems express a want for self-revolution while each protagonist has duties and societal expectations that are holding them back. Tennyson uses experience, gender, and identity in "Ulysses" and "The Lady of Shalott" to explore the idea of personal revolution.

James Joyce's Ulysses was written throughout a total duration of seven years, and was published by episodes in The Little Review, an American journal. The eighteen episodes were eventually put together in the form of a novel and published in 1922, in Paris, by Sylvia Beach.