Dubliners Research Paper

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James Joyce’s “Dubliners” is a collection of short stories revolving around the themes of epiphanies and emotional paralysis afflicted upon the main characters. Four of these stories of which were “Araby,” ”The Dead,” ”Eveline” and ”Clay” and after reading them I’ve noticed that with these four in particular the epiphanies tend to focus on the characters having to question their love in regards to what the love they have (or believe they have) means to them. By the end I hope you will also see how the epiphanies presented are related to each other.
Araby
Araby is a story about a boy who falls in love with an older girl in his neighborhood and in an attempt to win her heart he goes to a bazaar named Araby to buy something for her as he …show more content…

Her story ends with preparation to go with Frank and live like a sailor taken out into the blue abyss from which at the last moment she came upon an epiphany that she was only looking for a way out of the life she has known (being abused by her father) for a while and realizes that she is needed there (to take care of the children that she would be leaving behind). As I mentioned in my thesis I will be focusing on how the epiphanies are related through love and how they must question what it means to them ‘to love’ and when you think about how Eveline felt soon before her departure you can see how this falls into place. On the last page of the story “Eveline hears a street organ and thinks it strange ‘that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could.’”(Clive Hart) she had remembered the last night her mother was alive and spontaneously she thought that she had to escape and Frank would take her to the sea “…such as the sea as a symbol of freedom”(James Joyce) and be her savior but when it’s time for her to get on the boat she gets her epiphany. Eveline realizes that she didn’t really love Frank but instead loved the idea of getting away from her abusive relation with her father as she looks on at Frank with loveless

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