In James Joyce’s Dubliners I found his stories to be interesting, but since we didn’t get a chance to talk about them in class I’m kind of wondering what the purpose of the stories are supposed to be. For example, in “Araby” he goes to the event because he wants to impress this girl that he likes and to buy her something special, but if you read the footnotes you come to realize that he has next to no money to buy her something with and the story ends leaving you wonder if and what he ended up buying her. It was a little random and disappointing.
“Evelyn” on the other hand was a little more dramatic. She had this once in a life time opportunity but her woman’s heart got the best of her and held her back. She felt guilty and stayed to help take care of her family when she could have had a potentially amazing life with this guy off in another country. This story had the potential of a fairy tale ending but instead it ends it with her being in the same place as she was in the beginning. I like fairy tale endings, so that was a little depressing for me. Haha.
I thought that the stories were unique and the style they were written in is interesting also. For example, he calls a dead end road a “blind road”. Maybe that’s an Ireland thing? Anyways, kind of interesting none the least.
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I too found his writing style interesting. I am unsure as to how much is just creative use of language and how much may be cultural. The blind road for example.
ReplyDeleteYes, Evelyn had some initial opportunity for a happy ending but she seemed paralyzed from leaving.
I too was found floundering, wondering what the purpose was, so hopefully class will at least shed some light into this.