Dubliners by James Joyce

Dubliners by James Joyce

James Joyce has a very intricate way of writing his short stories. Dubliners is

a book of short stories revolving around several totally different people from the city

of Dublin, Ireland. Joyce puts these characters through a number of situations in order

to show the moral characteristics of Dubliners. These situations inhibit many forms of

human disturbances including: sexual frustration, escapism, self-identification, human

unfullfillment, the struggle between the classes, and toiling with the characters sense

of belonging. In the story Counterparts, Joyce uses a combination a psychologically

challenging lifestyle and everyday sexual frustration to drive the main character,

Farrington, to his breaking point.

Farrington is the commonplace Dubliner with a pointless job and an everlasting

need for a drink at the local bar. Reading the story, the reader can almost visualize

this boring drunk moping around on the sad streets of Dublin. Farrington’s job is one

of repetition, being that he transcribes contracts all day, and his only excitement is

the ten times a day he slips out of the office to run to the bar across the street. He

cannot get motivated to do anything because he has no feeling of self worth. Farrington

would probably rather be just a drunk who stays at the bar all day, but he needs the

money to support his habit. Joyce describes several instances where Farrington is just

sitting at his desk and cannot work which Joyce could be relating to either Farrington’s

stupidity or showing that Farrington is not doing what he wants because he is so

conformant to society that he cannot figure out what to do with himself. In all of the

Dubliners short sto...

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...all of his money on the days drinking. The absence of a female in

Farringtons life just makes it harder to have any reason of changing anything in his

life.

The psychologically challenging components in Farringtons life cause him not to

act in a positive way, but to continue the dreadful life he has lead up to this point.

In all of the short stories of Dubliners, the characters cannot escape form either their

actions or their environment. It seems that there is a definite order in the classes of

Dublin and although some are better off than others, even the higher classes cannot find

happiness in their lives and thrive on making the lower classes lives even worse than

they already are.

Joyce seems to be trying to get the reader to understand that Dublin is a

horrible place and its inhabitants are overshadowed by its horrific existence.