Joyce, James - Dubliners and Eveline

James Joyce: Dubliners, Evelyn

Joyce began in the naturalistic tradition with Dubliners a collection of 15 short stories. They are studies in the Irish life and types, which reveal the indecision, the frustration, inhibition that paralyses the will, and limit the lives of the inhabitant of Dublin. In all the stories, the climax consists in the special moment of sudden revelation of a deep truth. This sudden spiritual manifestation is caused by a trivial gesture, an external object or banal situation, which lead the character to a sudden self-realisation about himself/herself or about the surrounding reality. Joyce coined the word epiphany to indicate this breaking of light, using the words of Catholic tradition for the showing of the Christ to the Magi. This manifestation happens when a simple fact, an ordinary situation suddenly flash out with meaning and make a person realise his/her (usually miserable) condition.
The stories are grouped in four categories: stories of childhood, stories of adolescence, stories of mature life and stories of public life.
The unifying leitmotiv of the whole collection is the theme of paralysis, which Joyce perceived as a distinctive mark of the Irish capital at the turn of the 20th century. He saw the Dubliners as people hopelessly trapped by apathy and constrained by moral and religious bounds who are unable to achieve freedom and independence.

Narrative techniques

The style is complex. Apparently, it is realistic for it perfectly recreates characters, places streets pubs and idioms of contemporary Dublin, but on the other hand, Joyce makes use of symbolic effects, which give the common objects new and unforeseen dept.
The events are always told from a character’s prospective and include interior monologue. He moved from first- person narrator to third -person narrative adapting the language to the character’s social backgrounds and showing a remarkable understanding of human nature in key moments of painful self-realisation. Some of the stories anticipate the evolution to come; a clear example is Eveline, where all the action goes on the mind of the girl.

Eveline

Eveline is the story of a young woman who attempts to escape to her oppressive existence with a violent and alcoholic father by eloping with her fiancé Frank. Frank is a kind boy who would like to take her away from Dublin to start a new life with him We meet Eveline as she is trying to make an important decision: should she leave to start a new life in Buenos Aires or stay where she is and continue to live her dutiful but dull life. She considers the pros and the cons of her decision but she is at the end of the story unable to leave with him. Social economical and familiar pressures fuel her desire to leave and pursue happiness; on the other hand, her fear of the future and the epiphany like memory of the promise she made to her dying mother generate tension and confusion in her mind, which accounts for her final paralysis and numbness at the end of the story. The reader is transported directly into Eveline’s complex and tormented mind: we witness the claustrophobic atmosphere in which she lives through her thoughts, memories and her inability to act.