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Paralysis in Dubliners Essay

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In his letters, Joyce himself has said that Dubliners was meant “to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city” (55). The paralysis he was talking about is the paralysis of action. The characters in Dubliners exemplify paralysis of action in their inability to escape their lives. In another of Joyce’s writings, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, Joyce writes of Ireland: “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets” (Joyce 238). The characters of Dubliners face similar nets that prevent them from escaping their lives. Unfortunately, their attempts …show more content…

It is in this way that his fear of failure keeps him paralyzed in his unhappy life. An additional example of paralysis through indetermination comes in “A Painful Case.” In the story, Mr. Duffy pursues a relationship with a woman he met at an event. For a time, this allows him to break from his monotonous life. The problem is, the woman is married, and when the possibility of love comes in the picture, out of fear Mr. Duffy decides to break off the relationship. This returns not only himself, but the woman as well to the previous condition of paralysis and unchanging dullness of life. Another common cause for paralysis would be bonds that tie the characters to the city and their dull lives, preventing them from escaping. Nowhere it seems is this more evident than in “Eveline,” where the main character attempts to break free of her life and escape across the sea with a sailor named Frank. Yet at the end of the story, as she is about to leave, she changes her mind and does not board the ship with Frank. She clings to the pier railing “like a helpless animal” as she watches him leave (Joyce 32). This action was caused partly by fear or rather anxiety from facing a completely new and different life, but much more influential was the bond that Eveline had to her family. Her promise made to her dying mother to “keep the home together as long as she could” heavily weighs on her decision to stay (Joyce 30).

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