Stories of childhood

The sisters

This is the first setting of the general theme of paralysis(see the very first sentence in the story) and also of the motif of death which links ‘The Sisters’ with the last story of the collection. It is a study in appearance and reality(notice the contrast between the priest lying in state and what we hear of his life, or between the ‘big discoloured teeth’ and the boy’s romantic dream of Persia-to be taken up again in’Araby’; beauty is of the imagination, ugliness of reality). It is a study in human ambiguity: the boy is sad that the priest has died and yet feels as if he’had been freed from something by his death’; the priest is considered a failure and yet has widely contributed to opening the boy’s mind to knowledge. Such fundamental complexities are rendered through an equal complexity of structure (study the relationship of the dream, which is broken into several parts) and viewpoint (the priest’s character is revealed through the testimony of different witness, through dream as well as reality).

‘The Sisters’ hints at the incapacity of the Church (represented by the broken chalice) to help man to a balanced, creative, un-paralytic life; yet the permanent fascination of religious rites retains its grip. There is a possible symbolic implication that the priest stands for the Irish Catholic Church which sells vocations to susceptible children (young James long wanted to become a Jesuit)- hence the use of the word ’simony’- and insists on being served while failing the people that serve it. In this light, Eliza’s remark ‘God knows we done all we could, as poor as we are. . .’ would make her and her sister representatives of those Irish people whose language they certainly use.

An Encounter

A tale of initiation where the hero goes forth to seek adventures, becomes more and more isolated, finds temptation, terror and instruction. Or rather, a tale of false and incomplete initiation (he runs away). Notice also the gap between the type of adventures sought and what actually occurs.

Araby

Theme of illusion (oriental dreams, easy love) and reality (shabbiness of surroundings, in street and bazaar alike, hence the number of words and phrases such as ‘musty’, ‘waste-room’, ‘littered with old useless papers’, pages of books ‘curled and damp’ and ‘yellow’, ‘wild’ garden, ‘straggling bushes’, ‘rusty bicycle-pump’, ‘brown, sombre’ houses, ‘feeble lanterns’, ‘dark muddy land’; the ‘high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms’; the ‘ruinous houses’; the inanity of the conversation in the market; the pervading references to money into which all splendour resolves, transforming eastern marvels into mere ‘wares’, in contrast with the amorous epiphany during which the narrator’s heart ‘leaps’, his eyes feed on Mangan’s sister’s figure, dress, and intimation of underclothes (‘petticoat’) and his whole body is ‘like a harp’.

Theme of first unrequited love, sexual and sentimental awakening: ‘My eyes were often full of tears(I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. ‘By the way, is not the description a bit too heavy for Joyce to be quite serious here?

© Librairie du LIban.

York Notes, James Joyce Dubliners, notes by Patrick Rafroidi. Longman York Press, Beirut 1985.