Dubliners
(James Joyce)
James Joyce?s Dubliners, published only in 1914 after long disputes with his editor and printer over themes and direct references, is a realistic depiction of the Irish people?s lives at the start of the century. The book is a collection of fifteen short stories, each presenting an accurate picture of the everyday occurrences of different citizens of Dublin.
The themes that Joyce presents cover both the national and the personal-domestic point of view. Joyce deals with the political issues that trouble the Irish, and mainly focuses on Ireland?s relation to the British kingdom. In addition, he tells stories of poor and hard working individuals who struggle to maintain an orderly domestic atmosphere. In both cases, the national and personal, Joyce faced many objections to do with the language he used, his directness and use of obscenities. His publisher feared the book will be censored thus requested Joyce to rewrite the stories again and again, as well as to replace certain words that he thought will cause difficulties. Two touching stories that I personally value highly are ?A Painful Case? and ?A Little Cloud?. The first tells the gloomy story of a lonely man who leads a quiet life until he meets a married woman with whom he has an affair; four years after breaking up with her he reads in a newspaper of her painful death, and realizes he was the cause of it. The second narrative unfolds the story of two friends? meeting in Dublin after eight years; the one who left Ireland works now for the London Press while the other who lives in Dublin leads a depressing life of daydreaming and limited pessimistic hopes. There is, indeed, a pessimistic cloud that overcasts the whole reading of Dubliners, but it is an intense and important book written skillfully.
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