STUDY GUIDE FOR REQUIRED STORIES IN JAMES JOYCE’S DUBLINERS

Prof. K. Stoehr, HU 102: Breaks with Traditions, Team C, Spring 2014

Required stories:
Week 1: “The Sisters,” “Araby,” “Eveline,” “The Boarding House”
Week 2: “Counterparts,” “Clay,” “A Painful Case,” “A Mother”

One. The stories of Dubliners are the tales of complex situations in which “average,
ordinary” characters (whether children, adolescents, young adults, or older folks)
find themselves confronted with very personal questions and problems. Know each
story well enough to be able to describe the basic situation in which the characters
find themselves. Also be able to describe the respective personalities of the chief
characters as those personalities are shown in confronting the given situations:

The boy narrator of “The Sisters”

The boy narrator of “Araby”
Eveline and Frank in “Eveline”
Mrs. Mooney, her daughter Polly, and Mr. Doran in “The Boarding House”
Mr. Farrington and his young son in “Counterparts”
Maria in “Clay”
Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico in “A Painful Case”
Mrs. Kearney and her daughter Kathleen in “A Mother”

Two. Many of Joyce’s stories revolve around a moment of illumination, a kind of

“awakening,” in which greater self-knowledge and self-realization occurs. An act or
decision leading to some type of self-transformation may result from such moments.
Joyce called these moments “epiphanies.” But at times he also used the term
“epiphanies” for moments in which a particular object, person, or event is
experienced in a profoundly special, unique way. These epiphanies are typically
depicted in prose (unmetered prose) even though the language used by Joyce can be
very poetic (i..e., reminiscent of a poem). Here is what Joyce expert Richard Ellman
(in his biography James Joyce) has to say about the nature of Joycean epiphanies:

“The epiphany did not mean for Joyce the manifestation of godhead [i..e, the Divine],
the showing forth of Christ to the Magi [i.e, the “three wise men”], although that is a
useful metaphor for what he had in mind. The epiphany was the sudden ‘revelation
of the what-ness of a thing’, the moment in which ‘the soul of the commonest object
… seems to us radiant’. The artist, he felt, was charged with such revelations, and
must look for them not among gods but among men, in casual, unostentatious, even
unpleasant moments …” (ppp. 83-4)

With this in mind, look for an epiphany in each of the required short stories, and
explain why a certain moment might be called an “epiphany.” What kind of self-
awareness of self-knowledge is gained by such an epiphany, if any? Does this
moment lead to any self-transformation in the given story? Or is the given epiphany
merely a lost opportunity?

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Three. In the short stories of Dubliners, we witness Joyce combining three basic
literary styles: realism, impressionism, and symbolism. (You should also think
here of the ways in which literary realism, impressionism, and symbolism parallel
the types of visual realism, impressionism, and symbolism that we have studied in
terms of our studies of paintings).

a. The goal of realism is to provide a factual, objective, detailed description

of an object, person, or event in such a way as to give the sense of
imitating reality in a precise, accurate manner. As the realist novelist
George Eliot once said, the purpose of realism is to present a “faithful
representation of commonplace things.”

b. The goal of impressionism is to capture a “slice of life”: the glimpse of a

particular moment in the life a character in such a way as to show that
this moment is unique and transient (i.e., everything changes from
moment to moment). Impressionist glimpses from the perspective of a
specific character tend to be subjective and personal rather than factual
or objective (as with realism).

c. The goal of symbolism is to use certain objects or events as a way of

indicating or representing more abstract, more complex realities (e.g., the
cross or crucifix as a symbol of Christ or Christianity; a window or
doorway as a symbol of a character wanting to escape to another place).

With this in mind, find at least one example of each type of literary style in each of
our eight required short stories: Which particular description (of an object or
person or event) is factual and objective and precise in a way that exemplifies
realism? Which particular description is momentary and subjective in a way that
exemplifies impressionism? Which image or object or event offers a way to
interpret it as symbolizing a more complex (e.g., psychological) reality?

Four. Explain how each of the given stories illustrates one or more of the following
recurring Joycean themes: paralysis, routine, escape, loneliness, death, malaise,
desire/love, religion/spirituality

Five. Joyce’s brand of realism often emphasizes the fact that reality is not always
clear-cut or fully understandable. In other words, the human experience of the real
world (even of our own lives) may sometimes be indeterminate, ambiguous, and
open-ended. The real world does not always deliver complete information or neat,
tidy explanations. One way in which Joyce captures the indeterminacy and
ambiguity of reality is through his use of the ellipsis, which is an omission of certain
information (whether in terms of a character’s dialogue, usually symbolized by “…”,
or by something in the story/plot that is not fully understandable). By using ellipses,
Joyce summons his reader to use his or her imagination in trying to “fill in the gaps.”
With this is mind, find examples in the stories where ellipses occur (whether in
terms of plot or dialogue).