James Joyce’s The Dubliners Essay

In Araby, Eveline, and The on the spur of the moment, three piteous stories featured in James Joyces The Dubliners, the characters splutter with whether to live their lives with a structured workaday or to seek opportunities, change, and adventure. These short stories center around habitual spirit for citizens of Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century, when a choice amid continuing the inherited tradition of routine and structure versus seeking any other form of life or adventure could be the most important decision in the peoples lives. With the terrible potato famine still in biography memory and with Ireland seeking a new culture and identity, many of its citizens clung to their routine as means of survival. The ordinary routine of the characters lives suppresses and dominates the characters, preventing any of the characters ideas and dreams of seeking adventure. In Araby, every aspect of the little sons routine and workaday life impedes him from his adventurous goal s of visiting the annual bazar and fulfilling his dream of a relationship with Mangans sister.Despite his infatuation with his fri depot Mangans sister, the son cannot work up the bravery to spark a conversation and is pleasantly surprised when she asks him if he is going to the annual bazaar, hosted in Dublin. She consequently says that she is unable to attend, and the male child offers to bring her an item from the bazaar. Every aspect of the boys routine and everyday life seems to be trying to impede the boy from his goals, from schools boring lessons to his uncle forgetting to arrive kinsfolk early enough to give him money for the train fair because he was out drinking. Despite the adversities of his everyday life attempting to ensnare him, the boy does make it to the bazaar, tho his hopes about the bazaar are not fulfilled. When the boy arrives at the bazaar, he realizes that the bazaar does not live up to his expectations. The untimely distractions that caused the boy t o be young to the bazaar cause the boy to show up subsequently most of the excitement and trade has already ended. He approaches one stall that is still open, but the owner of the stall seems to be preoccupied with a conversation with several men.The cleaning woman notices him, but the boy says how the tone of her voice was not encouraging she seemed to conduct spoken to him out of a sense of duty. The boy buys nothing, feeling unwanted by the woman watching over the goods. With no purchase for Mangans sister, the narrator stands angrily in the deserted bazaar as the lights go out, with his hopes crushed as his grandiose imagination of the bazaar is disillusioned. This realization deflates the boys hopes and dreams of an adventurous and exotic life, ending his wishful love affair with his friends sister, as sur plaque as ending his ambitions for a more adventurous life, and is analogous to Joyces The Dead. In The Dead, the banal and reflectively melancholy party is indicative o f the monotonous routine that the Dubliners live by however, Gabriel, the protagonist, struggles with the psychological battle with his methodical approach to life versus a more accepting and unconventional mindset, in which he wishes to enjoy a happier outlook on life.The motif of adventure versus routine is ever-present in this short story through Joyces meticulous and selective choice of words. During a very normal routine of dinner, the aliment is on rival ends of the table, divided by sentries of fruit, and watched afar by three squads of bottles. This militaristic diction transforms a seemingly harmless dinner table into an adventurous landing field filled with action and excitement. The battlefield is not the dinner table, but the story in itself. The war is not between sentries and squadrons of bottles, but between the routine of life versus the hunger for opportunity. After dinner, the guests begin to dance.The guests partake in memorized dance steps and drop-off into ha bit and routine, one after the other. These structured dance steps rob the dancers of their individuality and creativity as uniform seizes the dance floor. The dancers are either forced to abandon their creativity and join in on the synchronized march of the automatons or be excluded from the group. Later on in the story, Gabriel learns from his wife about a previous lover. Gabriel enters a pensive and reflective state, in which he muses on the mass snow blanket all of Ireland, which most likely covers the grave of Michael, his wifes ex-lover, as well as the carve of all rising Dubliners. The snow, the culmination of millions of individual and unique snowflakes melting together to form one entity of uniformity, became a metaphor for the all-encompassing routine of the characters in Dubliners, covering them in life and in death. Gabriels reflections towards the end of the novel give the short story its name of The Dead, which is what all of the routine and structure does the chara cters in The Dubliners.Despite all of the negative occurrences that the routine of the evening and of life bring upon Gabriel, he summons the resolution to change his bleak outlook on life, vowing to boast a more optimistic and open watch on the world. In Eveline, the protagonist Eveline is faced with a rare opportunity to terminate a charge from Ireland to Buenos Aires with her boyfriend, Frank, but the routines and memories of her life ensnare her and prevent her from making the choice to seek adventure and excitement. This decision is an important joint in Evelines life, to continue with a life of an abusive father or an uncertain future with her boyfriend. The story begins with Eveline reflecting upon her childhood and contemplating the difficult decision that lies before her. She first has an epiphany, realizing that she cannot stay where she is, stuck in the autonomous life of routine and then becomes sympathetic to her father, saying how he was not all that abusive to he r. Soon after this thought, Eveline hears an organ playing in the street, reminding Eveline of her mother.This recollection of her mother immediately compels Eveline to decide that she cannot live her life the way her mother did, being swallowed up and forgotten by the routines of cooking and cleaning, all but forgotten in a sad and monotonous life. Eveline decides to head to Buenos Aires with Frank. As they are about to board the ship, Eveline resorts back to her routine by praying. The familiar chanting of the prayers versus the desire to flee with Frank renders Eveline in a state of paralysis, plain of confidence after the destructive battle raging in her head between the two waging sides of her life, fiercely battling each other for superiority of Evelines subconcious. Eveline is left on the docks while Frank boards the ship. Because she does not move away from her routines, she is stuck forever with them. Her momentary epiphany regarding her mother and the monotonous routines of her life exit go in vain, and she will end up living the exact life that her mother did.The vicious cycle of repetitive and daily routine leaves the Dubliners helpless and lonely. Often, the routine forces the character into a state of unrequited love. In Araby, the routine leaves the boy in love with Mangans sister, neer to know whether she shared any of his feelings. In Eveline, Eveline is left in the abusive and vicious cycle of her life, while her love is sailing off to Buenos Aires. In The Dead, Michael is literally buried under the mass routine of the snow, while his lover lives on, loving someone else.These protagonists each face difficult situations, of which they are not sure how to solve. As a mechanism of coping, they seek repetition, comfort, and conformity that alone the routines of their middling lives can bring. Without ever taking chances, they are sure to never achieve more than an average life. The characters in The Dubliners never take a chance to succeed and triumph over mediocrity. In doing this, they never give themselves a chance to fail, but they also never give themselves a chance to succeed. These characters have an opportunity to try to lift themselves up from the routinely abusive cycle of their lives, but cannot free themselves from their shackles, just adding a few more degrees to the circle of false hopes and adventure that defines these misfortunate and disillusioned characters.Works CitedJoyce, James. Dubliners. retch Gutenberg. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2012. .