James Joyce’s Emphasis on Character in Dubliners
Written in 2007
If one is looking for classic plots to unfold in this collection of short stories aptly titled Dubliners, he or she will be disappointed at every turn. In these stories James Joyce revisits—no, re-inhabits—Dublin, the city of his birth, and relates tales about his city’s people. It is these people, adolescents through the elderly, who are the substance of this remarkable collection, and their conflicts, though important, play second fiddle here, for instead of these characters’ conflicts leading to dramatic, climactic resolutions, they more often lead to epiphanies which sometimes complicate the conflicts, these latter left dangling, suspended in thin air like a spider hanging from its own thread.
In the first story, “The Sisters,” an adolescent experiences death for the first time with the demise of his friend Father Flynn; subsequently, he also discovers some of the mysteries and disappointments of life when he begins to understand how unfulfilling the priest’s life was, how disillusioned the priest must have been during his last days. The boy listens while the priest’s sister speaks about the time she was looking for Father Flynn one evening not long before his death: “And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself?” (10-11). The story ends with the boy, along with the reader, sadder and wiser; the conflict, however, remains unresolved.
My favorite from this first section of stories dealing with the young is “Araby.” A nameless narrator, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, pines away for a friend’s sister but is afraid to speak to her. Finally he encounters her on a walk. She asks him if he is going to visit the bazaar, Araby, a train ride away, for she would like to visit but cannot, and he bravely answers that if he goes, he will bring her something. Of course there is a delay on the last night of the bazaar and the narrator arrives late, only a few minutes before closing, most of the booths deserted already. As he wanders along, the lights go dark at one end of the gallery, and he knows he must return home empty handed. His final thought: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (30). How sad, this sensitive and introspective foray into the vicissitudes of life, this understanding by a youth that the world will have its way with us, and then concluding that it is his fault. His conflict, instead of being solved, is exacerbated with this new understanding.
Joyce confronts the reader with these harsh realities throughout this collection. In “Eveline,” the title character denies herself any chance for real happiness when she refuses at the last moment to join her departing fiancé. “After the Race” speaks to the ultimate sadness of a young man’s life of dissipation and his unrelenting disquiet at the end of the day. In “Counterparts,” Joyce walks the reader through an evening in the life of an alcoholic, the details of that clear and detailed walk leaving the alcoholic character with a vague awareness of his ongoing rage and desperate unhappiness, but with no knowledge whatsoever of how he might be able to salvage his life. None of these stories has an old-fashioned climax; instead, they demonstrate a vision into the foibles of human nature and the vagaries of the world in which we live.
For me, the tour de force in this collection is “The Dead.” Here the reader meets a cross-section of Dubliners who are attending an annual Christmas soiree hosted by two elderly, charming, and somewhat empty-headed sisters. Their guest list includes their nephew, Gabriel, an intellectual college professor and main character of the story, and his wife Gretta; the debonair Mr. Browne, full of bons mots; the alcoholic Freddy Malins, who always needs to be watched; the pert and coquettish Miss Ivors, whose teasing puts Gabriel into a surly mood; and all the others, out on this cold, snowy evening to attend to their social obligations, perhaps, as much as to enjoy the company. The conversations go from the latest wearing apparel in vogue on the Continent (galoshes), to dance, to the great Irish musical voices past and present, to the gossip of the quidnuncs present at the party. Everyone has been to such a party.
But it is the insecurities of Gabriel, perhaps the most intelligent and accomplished guest at the party, that surprise us. His after-dinner speech is masterful, full of warmth, cleverness, and goodwill. But as we follow Gabriel and Gretta when they leave the party and see him unable to express his affection and yearning for her, we wonder at his hesitancy and begin to question the depth of the relationship. When Gretta shares the cause of her melancholia, at Gabriel's request, we are dismayed by his boyish jealousy. “A dull anger began to gather again at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to glow angrily in his veins. ‘—Someone you were in love with?’ he asked ironically” (230-31). It’s only later, when Gabriel watches his wife after she has cried herself to sleep, that the main character begins to understand his own pettiness, but we wonder if it will be a life-altering epiphany for this gentleman whose wisdom seems never to get beneath the surface of things; nothing ever really changes for him, nothing is resolved. He is, in many ways, as dead as the youth that Gretta has cried over.
Joyce has shown us portraits of a dozen or so citizens of Dublin, some of whom are aware enough to learn from their experiences, but just in case they don’t, or won’t, or cannot, the author need not fret, for the epiphany he can be assured of is the one within the reader, who has recognized himself in these troubled people. Herein lies Joyce’s mastery, a quality to be admired and, if possible, emulated by lesser gods than he.
Works Cited
Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Signet, 1991.