Dubliners, death and paralysis Essay Example

Dubliners, death and paralysis Essay Example Dubliners, death and paralysis Essay Dubliners, death and paralysis Essay even Mr Duffys face is brown, the brown tint of the Dublin streets. a symbol of a decaying Mr Duffy and a decaying Dublin. When Mrs Sinico and Mr Duffy start to meet up enjoying each others company reading, listening to music and talking, Mr Sinico pays no attention to the relationship forming between his wife and Mr Duffy He had dismissed his wife so sincerly from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect anyone else would take an interest in her. This showed the death of the Sinico marriage they were just co existing together. When Mrs Sinico advances her hand in intimacy to Duffy, but he retreats repulsed by her failure to understand, and he breaks off the relationship. When Mr Duffy is sitting in a cafe four years later and he finds the article called a painful case which is on buff coloured paper (a yellowish brown. ) Showing the death of her character, Mr Duffy then began to feel guilt and wonder did his rejection of her four years ago result in her sucide? He automatically turns it around to feel sorry for himself, when really he should be feeling sorry for Mrs Sincio or her family. Joyce as we know from the picture of the priest in Eveline, uses the colour yellow for corruption and brown for death, meaning that she has died a corrupt and weak woman, Mr Duffy also shows digust in her behaviour and her death and digust that he allowed himself to get clost to such a woman. Then he has a moment when he thinks of her in pity, pity for her loniness, however because of his selfcentred nature he starts to think of his own loniness and realises that he is not content with his hermitic lifestyle to which he has become accustomed to. We know this by his reaction to the couple in the park, who are having sex and making him feel even more alone in the world. He realises that his concern with orderand rectitude shut her out of his life, and this concern stops him from living fully, he is not interested in begining a new phrase in his life, but instead he bitterly accepts his loneliness. Mr Duffy seems incapable of genuine feeling and emotion and this seems to be inpart to blame for his painfull insularity and his obession with his predictable life costs him a golden chance at love and happiness. A painful case ended where it began with Mr Duffy alone. Corley and Lenehan refuse to grow old in Two Gallants, trapped in the paralysis that Joyce saw central to Dublin, therefore this story belongs to the adolscent stories of the Dubliners, even though the two are in their thirties. Corley and Lenehan are leeches, to give this story the title two gallants Joyce was using this title as a form of ironry because neither Corley or Lenehan are gallants. (gallants meaning to be brave or herotic. Corley takes advantage of the women, that he seduces, Lenehan does the same to friends, bartenders and Corley also. Donald Torchiana suggests that the stroy is on allegorical tale about the Anglo-Irish Ascendency and the culture or parasitiam and exploitation which they bred in Ireland. Their is evidence to support this theory, which would be in the referneces to the ascendency in the Kildare Street Club and in place names such as Shelbourne Hotel. The girl could be seen as a symbol of Ireland, representing Irelands depraved condition under colonial rule. Ireland is being prosituted by her English conquerors. This ambiguous connection between Lenehan and the harp is a national reference. When Lenehan enjoys his meal later on in the story his meal has the colours of the Irish flag the green peas and the orange ginger beer symbolishing the flag of Ireland and therefore in Joyces view Lenehan is a steorotypical Dubliner. At the start of the story Joyce describes Dublin as having a warm grey evening air and a gaily coloured crowd. Which Joyce is using colour to show the decay in Dublin the city itself and the people in it. Lenehan and Corley are both spirtualy dead in this story, they are scamming to get what they want, which in my opionion Joyce thought was quite typical of the people of Dublin using betrayel to make money, duping maids into stealing from their employers. Every main character in the three stories that I choose had deep moral and spritual paralysis and spritual death, with each character having a decision or situation which either inhibitits their well being or self estem and prohibits their ability to move forward. All three stories that I studied didnt have a happy ending, Joyce saw Dublin to never have a happy ending so he shows this in his stories. Dubliners are paralysed from acting or living decisively or even consciously. Joyce once told his brother stonislaus the city is suffering from hemiplegia of the will (Stuart Gilbert, ed. the letters of James Joyce, Faber 1957. ) He also described his intention to write The Dubliners as the desire to betray the soul of the hemiplegia or paralysis which may consider a city. The theme of praralysis and death is evident in every story in the Dubliners which I have come to the conclusion that this the way Joyce sees Dublin as a dead city diseased with paralysis, a city which one would want to escape from.