Essays on James Joyce

“Araby” by James Joyce and “Death in the woods” by Sherwood Anderson are short stories that are written by different writers. However, there are some common and different features that are applicable to both works. Both of the works are similar in their genre and focus on the female character, but on the other hand, they are very different from each other in themes. Short stories “Araby” and “Death in the woods” are very similar in the way they are structured. Both authors are using a male narrator for their stories. The stories are told from the first person ...

English literature

The 19th and early 20th century had to face a reality characterized by social, political and economic issues. Furthermore the World War One dramatically changed the already complex and troubled frame which gave birth to the Modernism. Indeed during the 19th century the traditional Victorian society turned itself into a modern and industrialized society, where cities were growing fast and the old ethical and religious values were rejected. This massive change also involved all the traditional forms of art, literature, architecture, philosophy, science and even all the aspects of the everyday lives. Salient of the Modernism Era is the ...

Character analysis

Character analysis What are you afraid of? I believe, all people have fears, both rational and irrational. While some people are afraid of heights, others have the fear of public performace. Fears can be conditioned by various reasons such as personal priorities, childhood traumas and other psychological aspects. Nevertheless, I am convinced that there is one fear which is common for most people. It is the fear of changes. The short story under consideration presents a very powerful piece of writing, since it addresses the alleged theme. Undoubtedly, James Joyce managed to portray a character in a difficult situation ...

Introduction

The topic of moral paralysis is the central issue in the entire anthology written by James Joyce. The author created his works during the time of economic stagnation of Ireland, which affected his oeuvre. This period of paralysis of the Irish society stemmed from the nationalist movement that promoted independence from Britain in terms of economic, political, and cultural development. During those days it was considered that England was responsible for the stagnation of Ireland by limiting its national identity and the ability to evolve. Therefore, Britain managed to paralyze its citizens, politics, economy, as well as culture by ...

Analysis of James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’

Quite a few of the short stories in the Dubliners collection of James Joyce are more of his personal memories as well as various sentiments that he holds. The Sisters, The Araby, and Evelin, are all stories which are more of a characterization of his later works. The narrators of all the stories of Joyce tend to disband into the language out of which they actually evolve. In these stories, rather than having speakers who relate themselves to the readers of the stories, the readers are actually seen being related to the language spoken by the narrators and the ...

Many people agree that the period of chivalry was probably the most interesting and fascinating. The word chivalry is mainly associated with knights and is usually described as institution of knighthood. It is also believed that chivalry presupposes such traits as courtesy, valor and generosity. It also presupposes helping the weak (such as women and children). It is clear that nowadays the concept of chivalry has become archaic. However, its examples may be still found in fiction and in modern life. For example, William Faulkner in his work “A Rose for Emily” and James Joyce in his work “Araby” ...

The world of literature has always intrigued one and all with the sheer quintessence of art and aesthetics. The readers from all the corners of the globe have been immersed in the aesthetic charm and affective appeal of the literary works of the literary artists who have proved their genius though their unparalleled portraiture and content that have left an immortal mark in the very innermost core of thee hearts of the avid readers. The history of literature goes on to document the works of many such stalwarts who have left the readers stirred to the core. James Joyce ...

Modernism combines a lot of literary directions and styles. It was rooted in literature with a new treatment of human being and it was focused on something atypical and personal. Besides, its main feature is to depict reality as a kind of absurdity and chaos. Personality is represented in the context of isolation from society. Society, in turn, has irrational and alogical rules, which are difficult to comply. The stream of consciousness belongs to one of the most prominent ways of modernism. The stream of consciousness in fiction is an extreme form of the inner monologue, which makes and imitates immediate ...

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is an exceptional book by James Joyce, a renowned Irish writer. Arguably, one of the key aspects of the story is the depiction of a character, Stephen Dedalus, who aspires to be an artist. The story explores his transformation from the good and religious boy he is to a man who ends up running away from his hometown, denouncing his religion and social constraints looking for a world of freedom to express his artistic self. The story navigates the transformation of the boy from an immature believer to a mature college student who can decide what ...

“The Dead” is one of the short stories found in Dubliners, an anthology by James Joyce. The events narrated in this story are a snippet of Irish culture in Dublin, the capital city of Ireland, at the onset of the 20th Century. Joyce employs symbolism, anecdote and description to create a vivid portrayal of Irish culture which is affected by political pressure (Parrinder 67). Joyce’s utilizes symbolism in “The Dead” (Parrinder 67) to capture the stagnant condition of Irish culture. As he arrives at the party, Gabriel, the main character, is freezing from the snow outside. Snow covers everything ...

- Family Influences. Cultural mores have a lot to do with the ways in family life influences you as you grow up, and with later decisions in life. You can have all the differences of thought, opinion and behaviour from other members of your family, but you can seldom, if ever completely divorce your identity from them. Your family is a vital component of your identity, and it shapes your character, as much as your individual influence affects other members of your family. Though family values are more or less more or less universal across all cultures, various cultural elements ...

Instruction

Introduction Araby is one of the most fascinating works by James Joyce. It is about a young lad who narrates the story and who leads a blithe life in a Dublin surrounding. The boy falls in love with a friend’s sister and watches her steps every morning. Hen the boy and the girl finally spoke, she mentions about a foreign bazaar right in town. The speaker later became obsessed with the plan of buying the girl presents from the bazaar. One major theme in the Araby is disappointment. The narrator is eventually faced with realism when he visits Araby and finds ...

The motif in the portrait is about a man, the main character called Stephen Dedaus whose life unfolds as a young obedient boy living with his parents in a Christian setting to an independent man who learns what he wants in life and goes ahead to follow his dream as a man. Leaving behind his parents and the expectations of his community towards, him he flees to Dublin. The portrait of an artist is brought out by Stephens’s character in following his dream of being an artist and the portrait as a man is explained throughout his life as he meets the women ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

‘Subject’ Short stories about love Alienation and initiation are two important themes in cotemporary short fiction. Literature exists through experience, and, more often than not, the protagonist of the story represents the society we live in and the experiences of every man. Particularly, in modern fiction, the adolescent hero and his struggles to embrace adulthood has been a major theme. Most stories having an adolescent protagonist portray the coming of age or the initiation of the young hero. This essay is an attempt to compare the portrayal of the experience of initiation of two such protagonists, from the ...

Analysis of James Joyce’s “Araby”

James Joyce’s “Araby” is a part of a collection of stories called the “Dubliners”. These stories looked into the hearts, homes, and minds of the people who are connected by the spirit of Dublin, the home of the writer. “Araby” is one of the sort stories in the collection Dubliners, published in 1914. Although Joyce wrote the stories many years before, the stories included events and characters that were quite similar to the actual people and places in Dublin at the time. This led to the issue of libel arising from the strong similarities that existed between the fictitious people in ...

The Dead is an intriguing masterpiece written by James Joyce and bases his storyline in Ireland during Christmas. Joyce invites the reader into his plot by his artistic description of things and scenery in his book. The writer points out the snow on the ground as symbolic of a blanket that covers the bad and the good on the earth. Joyce writes that the snow covers both the dead and the living and unites them into a frozen paralysis (Joyce, 184). The story of the dead encapsulates Gabriel Conroy as viewing himself superior to others due to his intellectual capabilities as ...

Coming of age and making the transition from child to man is one of the most difficult experiences a person ever lives through. One of the hardest elements about this is that it is the first major change. There is no former frame of reference to look back on. There is no concept that the smallest of errors will not have lifelong consequences. There also is no understanding of how thoughts, whether acted upon or not indirectly shape our actions. Araby by James Joyce and Nobody Said Anything by Raymond Carver both address that transition, and the attendant feelings ...

AMERICAN LITERATURE AFTER 1865

American culture is specific because Americans as a nation did not exist before 1776, but the art is being created almost the same after leaving the first free people in the New World. American culture has bypassed the Middle Ages, Baroque and Renaissance, but is nevertheless very much emphasized in relation to world literature. Period of civil war that has engulfed the American nation has brought with it many of the reforms except political. People have been shaken by war and suffering like finally a reality. No embellishment, no fantasy. The period between 1865 and 1914 in American literature indicates a ...

“The Dead” and “Barn Burning”

“The Dead” by James Joyce tells the story of Gabriel who is usually a favourite with family and friends alike. This evening, however, due to unfortunate circumstances he finds himself out of favour first with Lily, the housemaid when he delves into her love life when she snaps back at him. He gets into further trouble when a past colleague of his suggests that he is not being patriotic when he refuses to take a holiday in Ireland and opts to go cycling on the Continent instead. Gabriel manages to make himself useful later on during the evening and delivers a speech wherein ...

The years of James Joyce's life mark major transitions in world history, as well as in world culture. When he was born, in 1882, the worldwide transition from an agrarian way of life to the industrial paradigm was still in fits and starts. Wars were still fought hand-to-hand and on horseback. Literature was still primarily a mostly straightforward affair, as were the visual arts. Matters of perspective, the bailiwick of the modernist artists, were still yet to be the matter of much experimentation. However, the arrival of the Impressionist painters began to erode a unified perspective by considering how subjects might ...

György Lukács, the controversial Marxist literary historian and philosopher, proposed that as far as the context of literature is concerned, it reflects the condition of social life (Lukacs). Therefore, rather than appreciate a literary work from its aesthetic values, we can appreciate more from this perspective. Moreover, we cannot separate the process through which a literary work is created from the actual condition and environment of its creation. When it comes to literary works, they are greatly influenced by the socio-economic condition. In this case, authors would reflect this condition in their works. One such literary work that we ...

The narrator in James Joyce’s Araby is a mere boy of the age of nine or ten years. Although we see Dublin the way this little boy has described it, we find little warmth or joyousness in it, although the innocent little boy seems to think that whatever he sees around himself is very much normal. It is however pretty clear, that though this narration is of a little boy, the words are actually from someone who is a lot more mature. The boy seems to be infatuated with Mangan’s sister. He believes that she is his true love. ...

During the era after the Civil War, many authors started writing more about real life tales. These authors wanted to present life in an accurately realistic light. They particularly started writing about fate because they believed that everyone’s destiny was ruled by fate. The Story of an Hour by Kate Choplin, Eveline by James Joyce, and A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner were also written in the era after the Civil War. Even though these short stories were written by three different authors, it is surprising that the primary characters of these stories are female and have a ...

The sense of paralysis is often the background context in which James Joyce’s novels develop. In this case, discussing about a development of an action is paradoxically, because events have a round shape and it seems that they repeat over and over the same or in a very similar manner. In this setting there cannot occur any sudden change, any major event, but the life described in the author’s novels is dominated by an inertia, although the expectation of something to happen, to outburst is constantly dominating the Joyce’s writings. This setting can be visible in “The Dubliners” series (“ ...

In his short story “Eveline,” James Joyce presents a character who apparently wants to escape the confines of her current life but who ultimately chooses to stay confined. The story does not explicitly state the reasons for her decision, leaving it up to the reader to provide a rationale for what seems to be a foolish choice. In some ways, though, her decision may be interpreted less as a failure of courage on her part and more as a failure of imagination on Joyce’s part. Simply put, Joyce succumbs in the story to the traditional gender stereotype of women as lacking courage and ...

Multiculturalism Perspectives

Multiculturalism is demographic information explaining the co-existence of individuals coming from varied races, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds in a single organization or society. It is an ideological desire to celebrate diversity by providing certain policies and norms to manage diversity or by detailing a system which helps racial and ethnic communities to leverage encouragement to attain their desires. In most European nations, multiculturalism has led to serious debates and has drawn particular skepticism about its failure (Banting & Kymlicka , 45). The story Eveline by James Joyce and the poem People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko are powerful literary pieces which deal with ...

Story that I decided to use for this essay and exploration of some of the Aristotle’s story telling ideas is a story Eveline, written by James Joyce. Elements that are going to be analyzed include the following: the universality of theme, the application of the theme to the audience, dramatic irony, and if the story contain an epiphany, or a sudden reversal of fortune. James Joyce, one of the greatest writers from Ireland, knew very good Aristotle’s ideas of good story telling, and based on this story he applied them into his work. Aristotle had a very big influence ...

Araby is a short story by James Joyce about a young boy (unnamed; the narrator of the story) who has a secret romantic love for the sister of his friend (named Mangan). The story presents and contrasts two different settings – one being that of the frustrating everyday-life reality of the narrator and the other being a fanciful escape characterized by Mangan’s sister and the Araby bazaar. The dullness characterizing the narrator’s life, as portrayed by his lack of courage to admit his love for Mangan’s sister, the late arrival of his uncle who promised to lend him fare money for ...

"Eveline" by James Joyce James Joyce’s “Eveline” was published in a collection, Dubliners, London (1914). It is a short story about a young lady with intentions to run away from home with her lover named Frank. Eveline, the lady of the story, wants to leave for Buenos Aires in an attempt to escape her depressing situation. The 19 year-old girl’s thoughts about her life and her past are the major part of the short story as she sits by a window at home. Her father is a cruel man who used to beat up his brothers. Although it is not ...

Any literary work can be analyzed from various perspectives. Some scholars prefer to analyze language and lexicological devices of a text; others concentrate on the plot. There are also those who would prefer to study author’s biography and implications of personal life on a literary work. Although all mentioned above approaches to study of a literary work are correct and might help to unravel the hidden meaning of the text and true intentions of the author, there are also those cases when application of those techniques might not be enough for a comprehension of the literary work. Sometimes, in order to understand ...

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence of the quality of James Joyce’s work. It touches briefly upon his most renowned works, such as Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners and Ulysses. As if is the case with most prolific writers, his life greatly influenced his work, not only through his technique and unique style of writing, but also the approach he had in portraying his Irish Everyman in times of tumult and angst. It closes with the idea that his position in modern literature is undeniable irrefutable facility to commemorate the most mundane ...

'A & P' is a story about a checkout boy whose name is Sammy. The boy gives up his job following his boss’ unsympathetic speech to some three teenage girls. A keen analysis of the story reveals that in this work, John Updike, the author, portrays a contrast of two worldviews – the individualistic, non-conformist, and free-spirited views of the three teenage girls against the conventional, stoic, and conservative views of Mr. Lengel, Sammy’s manager. In this work, I have keenly analyzed the interpretations of two critics, Toni Saldivar and Walter Wells. To start with, I have given my own analysis and the ...

The story of Eveline by James Joyce is built on the uncertainties facing the human kind due to the changes in the life style. James Joyce enumerates the uncertainty of life brought about by the uncontrollable changes in human life. The author in this story captures the disillusionment of Eveline the main character in this story. Here, James Joyce shows Eveline as a disillusioned character faced with the realities of the changing world. Eveline is depicted as being overwhelmed by changes that over the years have happened in her family and neighborhood. The story begins with her nolstagicly recalling ...

In his book Dubliners, James Joyce included fifteen short stories, which were originally aimed to depict the reality and naturalism of the Irish middle class life in Dublin and its suburbs in the beginning of the 20th century. Not only did James manage to depict the actual life of its protagonists, but he also managed to show the variety of colours of that life, catching reader’s attention, at the same time shocking him. The stories were actually written when Irish nationalism was in full swing. These were the days when people were searching for national ...

There are several phrases that have been used repeatedly by Leopold Bloom in the course of Ulysses. For example ‘High Grade ha’ – this seems to be referring to the novel itself. The ‘high grade’ is so because the author can show off knowledge of Hebrew, discourse on reservoirs and gravity. The author is depicted as an annoying genius without self control, washing the reader away in vain and infantile torrent of words.

Stephen Dedalus is the literary alter ego of James Joyce. He appears as a protagonist and antihero of his first autographical novel. He appears in Ulysses as the ...