E-Book Overview
This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classic includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader understand Joyce's use of textures, dialect, and symbols. Each of the beautifully written short stories in this collection precisely details a brief scene in the life of a resident of Dublin at the turn of the 20th century. Although the characters do not know each other, their experiences unfold along the same streets and often overlap thematically. Their tragedies mirror that of Ireland, a country struggling for political identity and held back, in Joyce's view, by rigid religious ideas and adherence to tradition. Joyce's great skill at dialect offers a sense of the city's complex social structure, while themes of isolation, emotional paralysis, violence, regret, and death run throughout the collection and link all of the stories. Chronologically, too, the stories appear to progress; portrayals of youthful confusion and disillusionment in the opening story, "The Sisters," become the haunting midlife meditations of "The Dead." Like his masterpieces Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce's Dubliners displays consummate control of nuances, emotions, and images.
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Dubliners by James Joyce
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DUBLINERS THE SISTERS THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work. Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his: "No, I wouldn't say he was exactly... but there was something queer... there was something uncanny about him. I'll tell you my opinion...." He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.
"I have my own theory about it," he said. "I think it was one of those ... peculiar cases .... But it's hard to say...." He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me: "Well, so your old friend is gone, you'll be sorry to hear." "Who?" said I. "Father Flynn." "Is he dead?" "Mr. Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house." I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter. "The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him." "God have mercy on his soul," said my aunt piously. Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black eyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from my plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the grate. "I wouldn't like children of mine," he said, "to have too much to say to a man like that." "How do you mean, Mr. Cotter?" asked my aunt. "What I mean is," said old Cotter