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Dubliners (1914)

Author

James Joyce

Score

4/10

Image by Gabriel Ramos

Dubliners (1914)

BLURB: 

Collection of short naturalistic stories depicted in middle class in Dublin. Pervading this collection of short stories is a certain bathetic note, underwhelming each tale's conclusion often with an incongruous or dissatisfying emotion describing the protagonist's divergence from a conventional or emphatic denouement. Explores issues of identity and purpose often leading to the character's incongruous epiphany, at odds with the original trajectory of the story.

REVIEW: 

For someone who likes the cliché happy endings these stories perhaps are not up your alley; James Joyce, whilst ingeniously exploring the catharsis of epiphany and the inversion of concepts such as class and identity entrenched within the milieu, diverges from the tri-fold format of a satisfying fable (exposition/climax/denouement) and rather dangles the reader off the precipice of 'what happens next?' - perhaps a crafty technique to involve the reader in some personal introspective thought though.

THEMES: 

  1. Stream of Consciousness

  2. Bathos

  3. Revelations/Epiphany

  4. Class Division

  5. Power vs. Powerlessness

  6. Nihilism

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