Dubliners: Eveline

Passage:"He rushed beyond the barrier and called her to follow. He was shouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition. "


Within Dubliners, the story Eveline is not only the first short story with a female protagonist, but also a protagonist with a name: Eveline. The passage above encompasses everything Eveline is trying to get at throughout the story. At the start of the story, Eveline is a myopic, listless, individual leaning on a window, an on going motif throughout Dubliners, reminiscing in the past; which happens to be pre-British oppression, or "before the new red houses" (pg. 25). Eveline reminisces over the past, dreams about the future, and when given the opportunity to escape the present moment, she holds back. By remaining in the present- remaining in Ireland- she is dehumanized, "like a helpless animal". The dehumanization of Eveline is similar to the dehumanization of the main protagonist in Araby, who, at the end of the story "saw myself as a creature".

Though the end of Eveline is powerful, Joyce contradicts the climax, with a docile tone. Eveline undergoes an epiphany, which is why she's ostentatious enough to flee her father, a possible symbol of Ireland. When she is ready to board the ship with Frank, who is conveyed to the reader as a strong, brave, hero, she gives up. A rising climax is balked by the protagonist's incapability to leave her home, Ireland. Joyce describes, "She set her white face to him; passive, like a helpless animal", as oppose to being blunt, he eases the protagonist's defeat with a more soft tone; describing her face as, "white" instead of vacuous, or empty. He makes the reader perplexed, and draw their own conclusions, another ongoing literary element used by Joyce, begging the question: if she had the opportunity to leave, why did she succumb to defeat?

Dubliners: Araby

Passage: "I watched my master's face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly monotonous child's play."


Joyce uses the ongoing theme of the protagonist's struggle to grow up; evident in The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby. In the passage above, the protagonist has an epiphany like experience in his classroom. This epiphany is foreshadowed and supported in The Sisters, and Araby. In The Sisters, Joyce uses the death of Rev. James Flynn to put the protagonist at war with himself, and to see reality for what reality is; increasing the inevitability of an epiphany. In An Encounter, Joyce uses the Mid Western motif to echo the protagonist's striver to grow up, which is balked by the the protagonist's immature escape through childish literature. "I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life", since the protagonist has found love, he puts on as if he has found the true meaning of life, or "desire". The protagonist refers to "serious work of life" as "ugly monotonous child's play." By demeaning "serious work" to "child's play" the protagonist misleads the reader into truly believing he is progressing.


In Araby, the protagonist has found love. Love- a moving, light, florid subject- is contradicted by Joyce's tone. "When the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners." This characteristic of the setting sets up Joyce's repeated use of words like: "dark", "figure", and "shadow". Mangan's sister is never fully observed, she is always described as a "brown figure", or always illuminated by lamplight. This use of illumination and vague figure contributes to the intangibility of the relationship the protagonist has with the girl; always observing her through windows, or from afar, never seeing her straight forward, always via illumination from surrounding light. "I was thankful that I could see so little", the quote echoes Joyce's "dark", "shadowy", unclear tone, and, furthermore, proves the protagonist's inability to mature.

Dubliners: The Sisters

Passage: "It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas."

In "The Sisters", Joyce uses the death of the protagonist's close friend, Rev. James Flynn, to develop a theme revolved around a child's internal struggle with growing up. To further establish this theme, Joyce separates the story into three parts, each corresponding with a different chronological mindset. In the beginning, he presents the reader with a character unable to grasp the idea of the deterioration of his mentor's health, the protagonist is childlike. Joyce uses the above passage as a transition between black and white concepts of childhood, to more abstract and complex concepts of adulthood; contrasting the protagonist's childish thoughts of "Christmas" with the looming "heavy grey face of the paralytic". He explains how the priest showed him "how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts." Rev. Flynn is much older than the protagonist, offering a wealth of insight. Joyce uses the church as a metaphor for life; the protagonist is understanding the complexity of adulthood.



Diction plays a key role in how the reader will understand the story. Joyce uses word choice to shape his tone. Using words like: "grey", "dark", and "heavy". "There was a heavy odour in the room- the flowers." The flowers were an uplifting detail to the situation- death- at first, but the beginning of the sentence: "heavy odour", although ambiguous, conveys a negative tone towards flowers, which are an emblem of optimism and happiness. Joyce also, like Mr. Cotter, leaves many passages open ended, "But I could not remember the end of the dream." In doing so, he leaves a lot of thinking to the reader.