Literary Analysis Essay

In "Two Gallants," the sixth short story in the Dubliners collection, James Joyce is especially careful and crafty in his opening paragraph. Even the most cursory of readings exposes repetition, alliteration, and a clear structure within just these nine lines. The question remains, though, as to what the beginning of "Two Gallants" contributes to the meaning and impact of Joyce's work, both for the isolated story itself and for Dubliners as a whole. The construction, style, and word choice of this opening, in the context of the story and the collection, all point to one of Joyce's most prevalent implicit judgments: that the people of Ireland refuse to make any effort toward positive change for themselves.

The setting of the story, Dublin, has been written in such a way that only

The short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been”, by Joyce Oates, (1966), and the poem, “What it’s Like to Be a Black Girl”, by Patricia Smith, (1991), are both about the coming of age of young girls and the conflicts that they encounter. The two pieces explore issues that most young girls have with their bodies and others during their puberty years. The literary elements that will be compared in this essay is imagery and symbolism. The main conflict in both pieces that will be explored is individual versus self. These literary elements and conflict will help us to explore the issues that these two individual young girls

James Joyce wrote Dubliners to portray Dublin at the turn of the early 20th century. In Dubliners, faith and reason are represented using dark images and symbols. James Joyce uses these symbols to show the negative side of Dublin. In “The Sisters,” “The Boarding House,” and “The Dead” dark is expressed in many ways. James Joyce uses the light and dark form of symbolism in his imagination to make his stories come to life.

Dubliners (1914), by James Joyce (1882-1941) is a collection of short stories representing his home city at the start of the 20th century. Joyce 's work ‘was written between 1904 and 1907 ' (Haslam and Hooper, 2012, p. 13). The novel consists of fifteen stories; each one unfolds lives of the different lower middle-strata. Joyce wanted to convey something definite about Dublin and Irish society.

Throughout Dubliners James Joyce deliberately effaces the traditional markers of the short story: causality, closure, etc. In doing so, "the novel continually offers up texts which mark their own complexity by highlighting the very thing which traditional realism seeks to conceal: the artifice and insufficiency inherent in a writer's attempt to represent reality.(Seidel 31)" By refusing to take a reductive approach towards the world(s) he presents on the page - to offer up "meaning" or "ending" - Joyce moves the reader into complex and unsettling epistemological and ontological realms. Meaning is no longer unitary and prescriptive, the author will not reveal (read impose) what the story

In this book, I discussed Joyce’s life, literature and the Irish history lectured by Joyce himself in Trieste entitled “Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages”.

There are many ways to supplement a story in order to add lucidity. It is done through literary devices and Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" is no different. "The Things They Carried" is a narrative about a soldier at war in Vietnam. However, this story provides multiple layers of meaning through O'Brien's tone and style that help the reader further understand it. Both of these literary devices are embedded in the story and gradually help define it.

With "The Dead", Joyce brings his lament for Ireland's plight to its depressing yet strangely peaceful conclusion. Like all the previous stories in Dubliners,

In “Eveline,” the main character, Eveline, lives a terrible life with a stern father, a miserable occupation, and a dreary home. When she is offered the chance to leave her abysmal life and start a new one with her lover Frank, she rejects this proposition and remains in Ireland. Immediately this presents the reader with a paradox. Why did Eveline stay? Wasn’t her life terrible? It is not until the reader digs a little deeper into “Eveline” does the paradox solve itself. Joyce uses various literary techniques to help the reader understand why Eveline did not leave with Frank.

James Joyce wrote Dubliners during the 20th century. As Joyce wrote Dubliners, he probably intended on telling what Ireland was like at the time that he wrote it. He uses many different themes in this book. He specifically uses the themes of light and dark and autonomy and responsibility to illustrate what life in Ireland is like. The stories that use these themes are “An Encounter”, “The Boarding House”, and “The Dead”. Each story contains the themes of light/autonomy representing freedom and dark/responsibility representing duty.

The Dubliners is a series of short stories by James Joyce first published in 1914. They form a picture of Irish middle class life in Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. The last book, The Dead, is considered to be the finest of the entire series. In this story we have the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy. He “is insecure, egotistical and demonstrates in his awkward attempts at communion, an often-profound misunderstanding of his companions (Free 282).” He is also the “favourite nephew”(Joyce 558) of the Morkan sisters who invited he and his wife Gretta to the annual Christmas dinner. Gabriel does what most good nephews do which is to be pleasant company and perform the typical male gendered tasks, such as carving the goose.

In 1914, writer James Joyce published a collection of stories that focused on a particular subject, the lifestyle of middle or working class Irish individuals in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In this last short story, greatly influenced by Irish history, of the collection Dubliners, “The Dead,” readers follow the main character Gabriel as he attends an annual dinner party hosted by his two elderly aunts and cousin. This is the longest story in the collection, which can suggest its complexity and importance, but because it is largely without a typical literary plot, the extensive dialogue and inaction of characters can make it somewhat difficult to read. However, readers are entertained with comic relief, most often at the expense of Gabriel, but also at the constant repetitiveness that finally gives way to a climatic ending. Through different literary modes, readers are able to discern what Joyce strongly tries to illustrate throughout the story, which is how repetitive and ritualistic lives can lead to the living going through life as though they are dead while the actual dead are buried six feet under, long gone from the physical world, but not forgotten.

Adaptations of Joyce’s works and stage biographies of the writer abound, making it hard for a writer to determine his effort and to create an appeal that will extend beyond tourist audiences or Joyce aficionados. Gorman, a compelling performer, frames his Joyce a montage on the fraught publishing battle that preceded the appearance of Dubliners in 1914. Most of the drama, however, consists of nearly verbatim enactments of Joyce’s texts of 'An Encounter', 'Counterparts', 'A Mother' and 'Two Gallants'. Gorman enacts roles from that of the insufferable snob, Mrs. Kearney, the eponymous mum of the latter story, to the little boys in the others. Set in the offices of Grant Richards, Joyce’s cautious but eventual publisher, Gorman as Richards, begins his correspondence with the author in Eoghan Darcy and Edward Stevenson’s clever, utilitarian set comprised of stacks of folded cardboard boxes the size of reams of paper which function as office furniture.

Dubliners is a naturalistic depiction of middle-class life in Ireland in the early 20th century. Joyce uses no real consistency or theme throughout this collection of short stories except for his revolutionary style of starting a story with a conflict and refusing to include