The document discusses James Joyce's short story 'The Dead' and analyses its use of symbolism to depict the paralysis of Dublin. It also explores other works by Joyce, such as 'Ulysses' and 'Araby', highlighting his unique narrative style and themes related to self-discovery, unattainable dreams, and the socio-political context of Ireland. Overall, it emphasizes Joyce's influence as a major literary figure in the 20th century, known for his stream-of-consciousness technique and rich symbolic representations.

1. Essay about James Joyce's The Dead
James Joyce's The Dead
In The Dead, James Joyce lets symbolism flow freely throughout his short story. James Joyce
utilizes his main characters and objects in The Dead to impress upon his readers his view of
Dublin's crippled condition. Not only does this apply to just The Dead, Joyce's symbolic themes also
exude from his fourteen other short stories that make up the rest of Joyce's book, Dubliners, to
describe his hometown's other issues of corruption and death that fuel Dublin's paralysis. After
painting this grim picture of Dublin, James Joyce uses it to express his frustration and to explain his
realistic view that the only solution to the issues with Dublin depends on a move to the West and
towards a new life, rather than...show more content...
Coupled with his depiction of Dublin's immobile status through his characters, James Joyce also
exemplifies his theme of paralysis through snow. In Daniel R. Schwarz's psychoanalytic criticism
of The Dead, he explains that "the snow imagery focuses our attention on a world outside
Gabriel...where as ice, it suggests the emotional sterility of a world reduced to social gestures,
empty talk, and loveless relationships" (Schwarz 123). However, I disagree with Schwarz and
believe that James Joyce uses snow to symbolically represent the cold and dead Dublin due to its
uncertain political period. When Gabriel first enters his aunt's party, "A light fringe of snow lay
like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his galoshes; and as the
buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow–stiffened frieze, a cold
fragrant air from out–of–doors escaped from crevices and folds" (The Dead 23). This symbolism
comes back at the end of The Dead through Gabriel's later thoughts on how the snow "was falling on
every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills...falling upon every part of the lonely
churchyard," and touching both the living and the dead, symbolizing that not only Gabriel, but his
entire country, both the living and the lifeless had been united in
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2. Essay on Ulysses by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
Many novelists directly reflect their life stories and personal circumstances in their works, so
closely that the works may seem autobiographical. Although there are autobiographical parallels
between James Joyce's life and that of his characters in Ulysses, the novel's scattered
autobiographical details are more in the line of delightful puzzles to be ferreted out, rather than
direct insights into Joyce's life. What is really important in Ulysses is not the ties to Joyce's personal
experience; it is the way he uses his distinctively Irish experience to comment on the human
condition in general.We think of Joyce as an Irish writer, and it may be surprising to learn that he
left his native land as a...show more content...
Joyce called his novel Ulysses as a conscious attempt to thematically evoke Homer's Odyssey, whose
hero Ulysses (today generally called Odysseus) also made an epic journey of self–discovery. Yet it is
not only the Greek classics to which Joyce has turned for inspiration, but the medieval Irish
classics as well. One has only to read any cycle of medieval Celtic myth (such as the Irish Noinden
Ulad, or the Welsh Mabinogen) to observe the same extraordinary structure at work there. The
episodic formlessness of the Irish mythological epics heavily influenced the choice of form –– or,
some would say, the lack thereof –– that was begun in Joyce's earlier works and brought to full
fruition in Ulysses. The story line in either of these cycles flits from one anecdote to another in a
manner that foreshadows Joyce's own stream–of–consciousness technique.
In addition, Joyce's words are arranged not in a rational manner but with a wild, intuitive Irishness,
with as much emphasis on the magic of language as there is on its intellectual logic. We can see an
example of this in Molly Bloom's ruminations in the final chapter, which consists of one single
sentence extending for forty pages, with thought falling on thought like leaves piling up in the
autumn. Consider just a fragment of that passage: "Yes because he never did a thing like that before
as ask to get his
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3. Essay on Araby, by James Joyce
In his short story "Araby", James Joyce portrays a character who strives to achieve a goal and
who comes to an epiphany through his failure to accomplish that goal. Written in the first person,
"Araby" is about a man recalling an event from his childhood. The narrator's desire to be with the
sister of his friend Mangan, leads him on a quest to bring back a gift from the carnival for the girl.
It is the quest, the desire to be a knight in shining armor, that sends the narrator to the carnival and
it's what he experienced and sees at the carnival that brings him to the realization that some dreams
are just not attainable.
Joyce uses the setting of the story to help create a mood and to develop characters and themes
throughout the...show more content...
"Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door...At night in my bedroom
and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read." This shows
the extent to which the narrator desires to be with Mangan's sister.
During the narrator's first encounter with Mangan's sister, she "turned a sliver bracelet around her
wrist." Picturing this bracelet twisting and spinning around the girl's wrist gives the reader a sense
that the narrator's emotions too are spinning round and round as he is finally talking to the girl of
his dreams. He describes her " silver bracelet", "the white curve of her neck", and the "white border
of a petticoat" to give Mangan's sister a sense of innocence and purity.
"If I go, I said, I will bring something for you." This is where the narrator's romantic quest begins.
He has committed himself to going to Araby, an exotic carnival of wonder and enchantment, to
bring back a gift for the girl he is in love with. What seems to be a simple task: go to the carnival,
get a gift and bring it back; turns out to be one upset after another. The day of the carnival the
narrator's uncle, who has the narrator's money, arrives home late. In his drunken state, the uncle
hands the narrator the money and sends him on his way. "I took my seat in a third class carriage of
a deserted train.
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4. Essay on James Joyce
James Joyce
James Joyce, an Irish novelist and poet, grew up near Dublin. James
Joyce is one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. In each of his prose works he
used symbols to experience what he called an "epiphany", the revelation of certain
revealing qualities about himself. His early writings reveal individual moods and characters and the
plight of Ireland and the Irish artist in the 1900's. Later works, reveal a man in all his complexity as
an artist and in family aspects. Joyce is known for his style of writing called
"stream of consciousness". Using this technique, he ignored ordinary sentence structure
and attempted to reproduce the rambling's of the...show more content...
After Ulysses in 1922, he was left a lot of money from an
Englishwoman, and then spent his time working on his writing full time. This book A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man in 1916, was an autobiographical novel about his youth and his home life. The
main character's name in this is
Stephen Dedalus. It shows a clear cut , advocary of an artists right to defy inhibiting forces like,
family, church and nation. When Stephen, was in the university he talks about hi dislike for his
classmates who just bend their heads and write in their notebooks, "the points they were
bidden to note, nominal definitions, essential definitions and examples or dates of birth or death,
chief works, a favorable and unfavorable criticism side by side," Joyce's views of Irish
education weren't very good. Stephen in this book scorns his family, and his fathers attributes. He
thinks that he has failed in his effort to unite his will and the will of God, to love God the way he
feels is expected.
He feels this because he will not serve God. He wants to live his life his way.
He talks about how he knew he couldn't be accepted, "it wounded him to think that he would
never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture and that the monkish learning, in terms of
which he was striving to forge out an esthetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived
than the subtle and curious jargons of heraldry
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5. James Joyce Essay
In selecting James Joyce's Ulysses as the best novel of the twentieth century, Time magazine
affirmed Joyce's lasting legacy in the realm of English literature. James Joyce (1882–1941), the
twentieth century Irish novelist, short story writer and poet is a major literary figure of the
twentieth–century. Regarded as "the most international of writers in EnglishВЎK[with] a
global reputation (Attridge, pix), Joyce's stature in literature stems from his experimentation with
English prose. Influenced by European writers and an encyclopedic knowledge of European
literatures, Joyce's distinctive writing style includes epiphanies, the stream–of–consciousness
technique and conciseness.
Born in Rathgar, near Dubtin, in 1882, he lived his...show more content...
Hauptmann's comprehensive version of the portrait of an artist helped Joyce develop his own
interpretation. A further clarification was provided by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche
(1844–1900). Joyce adapted Nietzsche's concept of the Superman in developing his portrait of an
artist. Although Joyce rejected the Catholic Church all his life, Reynords, in Joyce and Dante: The
Shaping Imagination clams that the Italian poet and the greatest of Catholic poets Dante Alighier
(1265–1321) "whose influence pervades all Joyce's writing is never cowed by
authority" (Attridge p. 56–57). Perhaps that is why Joyce was attracted to Dante's writing.
	Of all his literary countryman, the only Irish literary who's left a profound impression on
Joyce was that Irish nationalist poet, James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849). In the short story
"Araby," Joyce pays tribute to the poet by naming the narrator's classmate, Mangan.
Joyce identified with Mangen because of his linguistic skill and knowledge of the literature of Italy,
Spain, France and Germany. Furthermore, Mangan was disdained by his Irish contemporaries––a
gesture Joyce considered an act of treachery.
	Joyce's use of the stream–of consciousness technique first appeared record these
epiphanies with extreme care, "seeing that they themselves are the moments." (Kalasty,
p.199) Although all the stories
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