James Joyce

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Data:	09.07.2007
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JAMES JOYCE, THE DUBLINERS, 1914-ARABY
J explains that his aim in writing the book was to show how his country was pervaded from paralysis and decay. He choose Dublin for the scene because it seemed to be the centre of paralysis. The theme of paralysis runs throughout the 15 stories and the characters concerned are the inhabitants of Dublin.
In Araby paralysis could be seen in the various incidents which delay the boy’s arrival at the bazaar, in the indifference of adults, in the emptiness and darkness of the bazaar, in the final frustration of the boy’s hope, in the failure of his dream love, in the contrast between the purity and the intensity of his feelings for the girl and the triviality of the actions which take place in the bazaar. Paralysis is also conveyed through the atmosphere of decay which pervades in the story.
In The Dead paralysis could be seen in Gabriel’s personality and behaviour. The contrast between him and Michael Furey brings out his incapacity for deep love and true sympathy. This is revealed by his difficulty in thinking of words of comfort when he images aunt Julia’s death, but especially by his tepid love for his wife. G’s reflection on M’s heroic death is also accompanied by his feeling of frustration when he realises that he too is approaching the world of the dead, but not in a time of vigour and enthusiasm. The detailed and realistic description of the setting, the characters, the events is also a characteristic of the style of The Dead. However, at the end of the story, where the narrative focus is on G’s thoughts, the flow of thinking is reproduced through a technique which anticipates the interior monologue Joyce was to use in the Ulysses.
Araby is a short story told by a first person narrator, probably an adult who speaks about the days he was young and in love. The unusual and original characteristic of the story is that it deals more with emotions and feelings rather than real facts and events: through the detailed and realistic description of his memories, the narrator transmits the impressions and the feelings he lived when he was young. So, the realisms he uses conveys his own feelings and thoughts. However, some of the details may become more important than others, because they may suddenly reveal a truth; they may even acquire a symbolic value and be the key to the meaning of the story..
1st part: the story starts with the description of North Richmond Street, where the boy lives and where he plays with his friends. The description gives physical and sensory details and creates the atmosphere of the place. First of all the narrator describes the houses in the street: they are brown and one in front of the other; then he describes his own house: it had belonged to a priest who had died in the house. The rooms had been enclosed for a long time, so there was an unpleasant smell; moreover, the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old yellow papers. Behind the house, there was a wild garden with a central apple tree. After the description of his own house, the narrator talks about other people in the street: he mentions his friends and the game they used to play; one of the most important persons is Mangan’s sister: he remembers her dress which swung as she moved her body and her tress which moved rapidly from side to side.
The technique the narrator uses for the description is that of a realistic and detailed one; in fact sensations linked to hearing, touch, smell and sight provide the main features of the description. Through this detailed description the aim of the narrator is to provide his own impression in front of what he lived. Of course, his memories convey impression and feelings of death, decay, abandon, poverty, solitude.
2nd part: this part of the story shows how the boy’s feeling develops and what physical and emotional reactions it causes in him. His feelings to the girl are described through the actions he did and the thoughts he had every day (the narrator let the reader understand what his feeling was, he doesn’t reveal it explicitly). Every morning the boy laid on the floor in the front parlour (so that he couldn’t be seen) watching the door of her beloved’s house. When she came out on the door step, his heart leaped. Then he ran to the hall and followed the girl for the way school. He rarely spoke to her, he just walked behind looking at her and when their ways diverged, he quickened his pace and passed her.
The love the protagonist feels for the girl is as intense as a religious experience. The feelings he has for the girl is like a confused adoration, and some similes he uses to describe the growing feeling demonstrate it: “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of enemy”. The chalice symbolises the memory of the girl, while he represents himself as a martyr who brings an image of purity and beauty in contrast to the decay and ugliness of the world. Moreover, he says he made strange prayers to the girl that he was not able to understand; his eyes were often full of tears and he had a big flood in his heart.
3rd part: the first close meeting the boy has with the girl is the first most important event in the whole story. During their first close meeting, the light of a lamp opposite the door where they spoke illuminated some details of her body that he will never forget: her white neck, her plaited hair and her hand laid upon the railing; a silver bracelet on her wrist, the white board of her dress. All these details convey the idea he had of her beloved: the girl is like an angel, she is beautiful and pure. Her image and the colour she brings are in contrast with the darkness of the evening; so she is the light against the darkness of the scene; she is a creature who appears in front of him completely different from the decay and the degrade of the place they lived.
He exchanged only a few words with the girl, but one reminds in his mind: Araby. The protagonist in fact promised the girl that he would go to the bazaar Araby and bring something back to her.
The expectation of the Saturday when he is to go to the bazaar raises new feelings in the boy: since the meeting in fact the only thoughts of the boy were that of the girl and the bazaar. At school he became impatient and annoyed, because work at school seemed to him something childish in contrast to his deepest feeling. Moreover, the word Araby produced like an Eastern enchantment over him.
However, in one week time never passed and the arrival of the Saturday was endless; finally, when Saturday arrived, the evening when he was to go to the bazaar never arrived! The narrator describes even the less significant details to show how time never passed, how long the waiting appeared to him, how his tension on the Saturday grew. Moreover, first the delay of his uncle, then the fact he had forgotten to accompany his nephew, delayed the arrival to the bazaar. All these details convey the irritation and the anxiety the boy felt. Eventually, the boy is able to go to Araby: he run and caught the train to the bazaar.
4th part: this part should be the climax of the story, that is, the point at which the boy’s tension towards the fulfilment of his wish is highest, but it is, in fact, an anticlimax in which he feels frustrated, disappointed and angry. This mood is created by emphasizing some details of the place, and the boy’s physical sensations and emotions.
After some problems with the train which further delayed the arrival, the boy enters into the bazaar, whose silence reminded that of a church after a service. The big silent hall surrounded by the closed stalls struck his attention. Fortunately, one of the stores was still open and he decided to go there. However, the frivolous atmosphere of the bazaar makes a contrast to the feeling of almost religious adoration that the boy has for the girl. It is at this point that he understand he has deceived (ingannato) himself and what he has anticipated as a religious experience is nothing but the impact of a place in which everything seems to deny spirituality. In fact the behaviour of the people he meets is in contrast with his feelings for the girl: there are some men who are counting money; a lady is speaking with two gentlemen but their words sound frivolous and stupid. “gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” As in all the stories, this appears to be the moment of “epiphany”, which means revelation, sudden spiritual manifestation. During the epiphany the character learns suddenly something about himself; in this case, the boy sees himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity, and he understands of having behaved not in the correct way.
THE DEAD
THEMES: Joyce is interested in the thoughts of his characters. In fact through the actions and the thoughts of the characters he wants to convey what their inner part is. The thoughts don’t have a chronological development, but they start from a sensorial experience and they develop themselves through associations and analogies. In this short story Joyce wants to represent the thought, which is a subjective and relative time of everyone’s mind. Joyce had already managed to represent it in Araby, trying to represent how time never passed for the young boy who was waiting for the Sat.
Joyce’s aim is not that of representing concrete facts and events, but it is that of representing the character’s thoughts. The stories he talks, do not have a long chronological development, they usually develop in a short time, as in The Dead. However, as in this case, the story of an evening, deals with the past, the present and the future story of the character, which is expressed through his own thoughts. In The dead we learn of Gabriel’s life thanks to his thoughts that shift from the present (her wife), to the past (Michael) and to the future (funerals).
Most of his thoughts are stimulated by something that he sees or hears (e.g.: Gabriel’s wife hears the song and starts thinking). Lying in bed beside his wife and looking at her while she is sleeping (sensorial experience), Gabriel starts thinking. His thoughts move from past to present and future: from Michael’s Fureys love and untimely death, to his wife faded beauty, to the main emotions of the evening, to Aunt Julia’s approaching death. Of course, death is the main idea which connects all the thoughts; G in fact emphasises the fact that everyone of them is becoming a shade. Moreover, while thinking he has a sudden spiritual revelation, an epiphany “he had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love”: he feels love for her, he feels sad because he had never known about Michael Furey.
NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE: in this story Joyce uses a third person narrator who tell us what he sees; however, sometimes the narrator disappear in order to let the thoughts of the protagonist develop. To do this, he sometimes introduces us to his thoughts through the use of verb as “think, remember, say…”, otherwise he let the thoughts develop without telling it to the reader. So, the narrator presents G’s thoughts as they occur in his mind sometimes with an introductory verb (he thought of what she must have been then…), sometimes without (she had had that romance in her life). This last technique is called free indirect thought, because it is not introduced by the words of the narrator; the narrator disappears and let the reader enter into the mind of the character; so, the reader do not have a narrator who guides him throughout the story anymore; his is free in interpreting the character’s thoughts and memories.
J introduced in his novels innovative features in plot, narrative and style. The main novelty was the shifting of the narrative focus from the events and facts to the thoughts of the characters. Of course, this was a consequence of J’s approach to the modern psychological theories. Therefore, the traditional description of the character’s appearance, personality and behaviour was replaced by the presentation of their stream of consciousness, that is, a mixture of impressions, mental associations, ideas and feelings that a name reveals. So, what the character are, what the character feel and think is more important than what they do. Another novelty, was the development of the story not in a conventional linear way; also this novelty was influenced by new philosophical theories: Bergson: time is not to be conceived as chronological sequence, but as flow and duration; the present contains the past and anticipates the future. Finally, Joyce needed an appropriate narrative technique that would enable him to reproduce the stream of consciousness. This new technique was the interior monologue, which was meant to represent the mental activity of the character as it developed, and even before it was organise into logical thinking, so, the role of the narrator was no longer necessary, and the reader’s access to the character’s inner life was made more direct. As techniques of the interior monologue, J used both the free direct and indirect speech.