Summary:

The young nameless narrator speaks of his friend, a man who has had his third stroke. The young narrator passes by his friend's window every day, waiting for the day when he will see two candles in the dark: the sign that his friend has passed away, for two candles are put at the head of a corpse. For some time, the narrator's friend has been paralyzed. The word has a strange sound to the narrator.

One night, the narrator, who lives with his aunt and uncle, comes down for supper. A family friend called old Cotter has stopped by for a visit; the narrator finds old Cotter tiresome, and hates his dull stories. Old Cotter is talking about a theory he has, about some event being "one of those . . . peculiar cases" (2). We learn soon what old Cotter is referring to: Father Flynn, the narrator's friend, is dead. The narrator's uncle mentions that Father Flynn was a great friend of the narrator; he'd taken the boy under his wing, and may have had some idea that the boy would become a priest one day. Old Cotter and the uncle discuss this friendship. Old Cotter seems to disapprove, as he thinks adults should "let a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age" (2). The narrator is silent, but furious that old Cotter is referring to him as a child.

That night, the narrator does not fall asleep until late. He's angry about Cotter calling him a child, but he also wonders about all of old Cotter's unfinished sentences. He was saying something about the priest. The narrator keeps seeing the old priest's paralyzed face. As he wanders between waking and sleep, the face follows him, lips moving as if he is confessing something.

The next day, the boy goes to the building where the old priest spent his last days. He reads the card on the door announcing Father Flynn's death. He thinks of how he used to visit the priest, going to his small dark room, where the old man would sit by the fire. Often, the boy would bring him High Toast, a kind of snuff, as a present. The priest used to teach him about history and Catholic doctrine. The narrator finds he lacks the courage to knock on the door and go in to look at the body. The boy tries to mourn, but feels he can't. School is out, and the boy cannot help but feel a sense of freedom, even in the priest's death. He's annoyed at himself for this feeling: the priest taught him many things, about history and Latin and the ceremonies and vestments of the priesthood.

That evening, he goes with his aunt to see the body. They are ushered in by Nannie, one of Father Flynn's two sisters, who took care of Father Flynn during his last days. The body is very solemn looking, dressed in vestments and holding a chalice. Eliza, the other sister, is seated in Father Flynn's armchair. Nannie serves the boy and his aunt refreshments. After some silence, they talk about the death. He went peacefully. The narrator's aunt asks if Father Flynn received his Extreme Unction, and Eliza says yes. Eliza speaks of caring for him in the last days: both she and Fanny worked very hard, and wouldn't have been able to manage without the help from Father O'Rourke. The care was difficult; they're poor, poor folk. Still, she'll miss him.

Yet he'd begun to behave strangely. Often, she'd come in and find him lying back in his chair, with his prayer book fallen to the floor and his mouth open. She mentions that he'd had a difficult life, and that his career was not what he'd hoped. After a silence, she says that his strange behavior began when he broke the chalice used in the Sacrament of the Mass. It affected his mind. One night, when he was needed to go on a call, he couldn't be found. They found him in a confessional booth, laughing to himself. That's when they thought something might be wrong with him.

Analysis

"The Sisters," the first of the stories in Dubliners, is also one of the more accomplished tales. Subtle, haunting, and beautifully controlled, "The Sisters" is also elusive, withholding from us the extent of the understanding possessed by the nameless boy narrator.

Many read Dubliners as being chronologically arranged according to the ages of a life. We start with the impressionable young narrator of "The Sisters." The boy, who remains unnamed, is intelligent and emotionally honest. But he may not see, as the reader does, many of the implications of the story he tells. Perhaps innocently, he reports the clues and puzzles that surround Father Flynn's death. Part of the difficulty of Dubliners is the amount of information Joyce withholds. Although the story is narrated in the first person, we cannot be sure what the child protagonist makes of the story he tells us. The boy tends to narrate in a straightforward manner, honestly sharing with us his distaste for old Cotter (whom he calls a "tiresome old red-nosed imbecile"); this particular passage seems to indicate that the narrator is still a child, as opposed to a wiser adult looking back with the added perspective of many years' experience. The boy seems to volunteer his emotions to the reader willingly enough, as when he shares his intimate memories of his time with Father Flynn. But towards the end of the story, he stops interpreting the information he receives. He listens to the conversation between his mother and the two sisters, but he does not draw any conclusions from it. In a sense, he withdraws from the story. More on that later.

It would be difficult to overstate the incredible influence of the Catholic Church over the life of the average Irishman in this time period. The Church looms over many of the stories in Dubliners, and over all of Joyce's work. He was deeply anti-Catholic, and at times his critiques of Catholicism are almost sneering in tone. "The Sisters" is one of his more controlled tales. The reader leaves the tale troubled. Father Flynn is at base a sympathetic character; at the same time, piety becomes problematic and the spiritually reassuring aspects of faith are undermined. Even the touching friendship between boy and priest is called into question. Old Cotter feels that no child should be spending so much time with a priest; such a friendship might unduly influence an impressionable youth, when he should be playing with boys his own age. The narrator disagrees, but then again, any dissent on his part would only be used by old Cotter to buttress his own argument.

Joyce was clearly fascinated by the awesome spiritual power invested by the Catholic Church in its priests. Priests are the bearers of incredible spiritual responsibility. The Church holds that through the priest as an intermediary, sin itself is atoned for. They are caretakers of men's souls, and masters of the many obscure and esoteric details of Catholic theology. But the mental decline of this priest has made him appear completely human and vulnerable. His mind, once the repository of knowledge about countless points of doctrine and ritual, has fallen into ruins.

Some scholars have identified the priest's mental illness as the final stages of syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. If so, the sins of the priest's past would also seem to strip him of any special or holy status. Remember that the mad priest is found in the confessional, where Catholics go to confess their sins; the location suggests that the mental illness could indeed be the final product of a past sexual transgression. The narrator's mother asks if he received Extreme Unction, a final sacrament. For her to even ask the question suggests some kind of wrongdoing on Father Flynn's part; under only the most extreme of circumstances would the Church deny the sacrament to a priest.

Both the priest's madness and his hinted-at past sin reveal a world apart from his life as the official of his Church. His official functions as caretaker of the Church, and his unofficial function as the narrator's avuncular spiritual guide, were once the only sides of Father Flynn that the narrator saw. But his madness and possible dark past are now revealed to the narrator, all while the narrator is having what is presumably his first intimate experience with death.

The mad priest also has clear symbolic resonance, suggesting that the Church itself has become a senile and raving institution, with a dark past that has yet to be answered for. The degeneration of the priest's mind seems a metaphor for the deterioration of Catholic theology and doctrine. What once seemed a rational and coherent system has turned into gibberish in the priest's mind; metaphorically, Catholic philosophy has changed from a respectable approach to the pursuit of knowledge into an irrelevant and esoteric system of thought referring only to itself. The degeneration is seen in other aspects of Catholic life: Catholics of this period were perceived as being ridiculously superstitious, and in this story all the supposedly rational doctrines of the Church are thrust aside by Father Flynn's sister in favor of good-old fashioned fearful superstition. Rather than seek a rational explanation for her brother's madness, she resorts to superstition: his madness began, she claims, when he accidentally broke a holy chalice used during Mass. The sisters are simple, good, poor, and humble, but their explanation for their brother's illness is self-deluding and irrational. In them and the impressionable young narrator, Joyce depicts an Ireland in the yoke of a tyranny that is mental rather than political. Paralysis is a recurring theme in the stories. The priest spends his last days paralyzed, and this sickness can be read a metaphor for the backwardness and reactionary politics of the Catholic Church.

The narrator is oblique and difficult, beginning the story with a degree of openness but withdrawing gradually from the story. We are permitted to see something of his growth: for example, he fails to grieve deeply for his friend, and he is sensitive enough to know that he should. He is annoyed by this shortcoming, and in this annoyance we see a boy measuring himself against what he knows is expected of him in this new experience. His dreams also show how the experience has shaken him: he sees his priest friend moving his lips, as if to confess something. This strange dream suggests that at least some part of the boy suspects his friend's past.

But towards the end of the story, we see less of the character's interpretive thoughts about his situation. It is as if the boy cannot quite put his finger on what has happened, in part because he's too busy trying to relate the bare facts. By the story's end, the narrative has the detachment of a story written in third-person. This removal of subjective opinions and feelings has the effect of pushing the priest and his story front-and-center in the reader's attention. The increasing detachment also suggests a boy still trying to make sense of what he has seen; the reader is invited to make sense of things, as the boy does, alone. The final frightening images of the mad priest are given directly from his sister's mouth, with no intrusive narrator to filter these events.

Summary:

The young narrator of the story explains that it was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to their band of friends. This world came in the form of the stories appearing in popular magazines for boys, like The Union Jack, Pluck, and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every day after school, Joe and his younger brother Leo have a group of friends over so that the boys could play Indian together. In their mock battles, Joe Dillon's band always wins. The narrator describes himself as one of those boys less aggressive than the others, slightly fearful of Joe Dillon. Joe plays too rough for the younger boys.

For the narrator's part, he prefers the American detective stories. But the circulation of all of these stories is forbidden at school. Leo Dillon is caught one day by Father Butler, who angrily rebukes the boy and denounces the stories as the writings of a drunken scribbler. The embarrassing moment, and the image of Leo's dull and puffy face, makes the West seem less thrilling to the narrator than it once was. The evening Indian games also tire. The narrator wants real adventure. Eventually, he resolves with Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony to play hooky and find a real adventure around the city. The boys pool together eighteen pence for their day.

The narrator is the first to arrive at Canal bridge, their appointed meeting point. Mahony shows up, but Leo does not. Mahony declares the money forfeit, so that he and the narrator will each have nine pence instead of six. As they wander about the city, Mahony carrying his "catapult" (sling shot), Mahony is by far the more unruly of the two boys. They chase a band of ragged looking girls, but then are pelted by stones by two raggedly dressed boys who are motivated by chivalry. Mahony wants to fight them but the narrator objects that the other boys are too small. The boys call Mahony a "Swaddler," a derogatory name for a Protestant, because he's wearing a cricket badge. Both the narrator and Mahony are in fact Catholic, but cricket is considered a very English game.

They buy some buns and eat their little lunch down by the river. They watch the barges and sailing vessels on the river, and talk about running away. The narrator imagines adventures at sea. They cross the Liffey, the river that divides Dublin, in a little ferry. On the other side they see the discharging of a large threemaster. The narrator studies the faces of the emerging sailors.

The boys wander through squalid neighborhoods, munching on more baked goods. Mahony chases a cat down a lane and into a field. Finally, they decide to abandon their original plan of going all the way to the Pigeon House because they have to be home by four to avoid getting caught. As they go into the fields on their way to catch a train, they come across a strange old man. He asks if they've read Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Scott, or Lord Lytton. The narrator pretends that he has read all of the mentioned books. They talk, and the old man asks if the boys have sweethearts. Mahony says he has three; the narrator says he has none. The old man talks about his youth, and the beauty of girls. He talks about all young boys having sweethearts, and the liberalism of the man's manner surprises the narrator. He walks away from them, excusing himself, and after a moment Mahony exclaims: "I say! Look what he's doing!" (18). The narrator never looks up, for an undisclosed reason, and so we never learn what the old man is doing. Mahony calls the man a "queer old josser," or simpleton, and the narrator suggests that they should go by the pseudonyms Murphy and Smith.

The old man returns, and Mahony runs off to chase the cat that previously escaped him, leaving the narrator alone with the old man. The old man tells the narrator that Mahony is a wicked little boy, and he asks if he gets whipped. The old man talks at great length about whipping boys, and how boys should get whipped if they speak to girls, and how much he would like to do the whipping himself. His voice seems toward the end nearly to plead for understanding. The narrator waits until the man finishes to leave him, but as he goes away up the slope he fears that the old man will run after him and seize him. At the top of the slope, he turns around and calls out for "Murphy," and the anonymity seems weak protection. It takes a second call for Mahony to finally come, but when he comes running the narrator is full of gratitude. Mahony arrives as if to bring the narrator help, and the narrator closes: "And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little" (20).

Analysis

Youthful longing for adventure and escape are dominant themes in this story. Joyce himself certainly understood those sentiments. He left Ireland as a young man, and for most of his adult life he lived abroad. For the boys in this story, dissatisfaction with the provinciality and dinginess of Dublin life find an outlet in American stories about the Wild West. The American frontier is a symbol for absolute freedom and adventure, not only in America but around the whole world; the boys use the games of cowboys and Indians to sate their only partially articulated desire to leave the tiny world of Dublin. For gentler boys, such as the unnamed narrator, the more cerebral American detective stories are preferable. But in both cases, the contraband stories of adventure and danger are juxtaposed to the dreary grammar school exercises the boys are forced to endure. When the boys have their day out, they spend a good part of their time watching the ships come in. The ships are symbolic of escape and freedom; unlike the boys, they get to leave Dublin and go around the world.

This story is yet another story of childhood, continuing with the ages-of-life structure of Dubliners. While the first story dealt with the transforming moment of a child's first dramatic experience with death, this story also deals with a kind of change. For our young narrator, the turning point comes when the games become tired. While Joe Dillon is satisfied using his Indian war games to affirm his dominance over the other boys (he and his band always win), the young narrator wants a piece of real adventure. The decision to play hooky marks the point where the story can begin.

The adventure is, of course, a disappointment to the children. One of the boys is not daring enough to go, but the other two boys go about Dublin finding little in the way of Western sunsets and native tribes. While the change from the numbing routine of school life is welcome, the Dublin they encounter is bleak, dirty, and full of unglamorous dangers the boys barely comprehend.

Part of Dublin's bleakness is its poverty. Instead of Indians, Mahony and the narrator encounter only small girls in ragged clothes. Mahony begins to bully them, and he also wants to beat up the smaller boys who come to the girls' rescue. Our gentle narrator intercedes, but not before Joyce has shown us some of the class differences in Dublin. Because of Mahony's cricket badge, the boys are mistaken for Irish Protestants. Class differences are clear, and also clear is the fact that this neighborhood's children are far poorer than either Mahony or the narrator. Dublin's divisions are not merely between Catholic and Protestant, but also between rich and poor. As power is centered in English and Protestant hands, to poor Catholic eyes it is often difficult to discern between Protestants and Catholics of a higher socio-economic level. The whole encounter conveys some of the bleakness and difficulty of Dublin's social landscape. It also does not speak well of Mahony and his upbringing, and by extension his class. His bullying of the ragged children has obvious echoes of class exploitation, rich preying upon poor, educated attacking the uneducated.

What adventure the boys do find in Dublin is sinister and dangerous, with little in the way of fun or glamour. The old man clearly entertains sexually charged fantasies about children. His sadistic fantasies about whipping boys are well outside the narrator's frame of reference; although the boys sense something is not quite right with the man, they do not flee immediately. Mahony even leaves the narrator alone with the man, indicating that he sees no immediate danger.

Isolation is a recurring theme of Dubliners. Communication fails constantly. In the encounter between the narrator and the strange old stranger, the boy initially thinks that this old man is one with whom one can actually speak. His frank talk of young boys having sweethearts comes off as refreshingly liberal, and the narrator feels that the old man is dealing with them as thinking beings. But the old man soon reverses his position, spinning off into his own fantasies about whipping boys, leaving the narrator frightened and baffled. Each character is as isolated as when the encounter began. At one point, the old man leaves, and does some undescribed thing that makes Mahony call the narrator's attention to him. Whatever the act is, it makes Mahony say the man is a "queer old josser," an odd buffoon or simpleton. We can guess with some confidence that whatever Mahony saw was in some way sexual.

Isolation is an important theme in Joyce's psychological portrait of the narrator. From the beginning, we know that the narrator is gentler and more cerebral than other boys. His friendship with Mahony seems an ill match, as he does not enjoy bullying children or small animals. But as he's left alone with the old man, he longs for Mahony's reassuring presence. When Mahony does come, the narrator is grateful to his friend, and guilty for the secret dislike he has of him. We end on this lonely note. The boy narrator is grateful enough for Mahony's company, but their friendship is not a deep or affectionate one.

Summary:

The nameless narrator of the story talks about life on North Richmond Street. The former tenant of their apartment was a priest who died. Some books have been left behind, and the young boy narrator sometimes looks at them. He is raised by his aunt and uncle. One of his playmates is a boy named Mangan, and the narrator develops a crush on his friend Mangan's sister. Mangan and his sister live in a building across the street. The narrator watches her stealthily, waiting for her to leave in the mornings so that he can follow her on part of his way to school.

One day, the girl finally speaks to him, to ask if he will go to Araby. Araby is the name of an upcoming bazaar with an Arabian theme. She can't go, because she is going on a religious retreat that weekend. The narrator, full of romantic notions, says that he will go and find some kind of gift for her.

The boy can think of little but the girl, the Orientalist bazaar, and the gift he will get for her. He gets permission to go, and for days he cannot concentrate. The day finally arrives, and the boy reminds his uncle that he wishes to go to the bazaar that night. His uncle will have to get home on time to give him the money for a ride to the bazaar, as well as a bit of spending money.

That night, his uncle is late. The boy despairs of being able to go at all, but finally his uncle comes home. His uncle has forgotten about the bazaar, and by now it is quite late. But the boy still wants to go, and he takes the small sum of money for the train and heads off.

He arrives at the bazaar just as it is closing. Only a few stalls are open. He examines the goods, but they are far too expensive for him. The lights are being shut off, and the narrator despairs: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

Analysis

As with "The Encounter," this story deals with longing for adventure and escape, though here this longing finds a focus in the object of the narrator's desire. The title, "Araby," also suggests escape. To the nineteenth-century European mind, the Islamic lands of North Africa, the Near East, and the Middle East symbolized decadence, exotic delights, escapism, and a luxurious sensuality. The boy's erotic desires for the girl become joined to his fantasies about the wonders that will be offered in the Orientalist bazaar. He dreams of buying her a suitably romantic gift.

The third story of the collection, it is the last story with a first-person narrator. It continues with the ages-of-life structure: we have had young boys for our protagonists in both "The Sisters" and "An Encounter," and here we have a boy in the throes of his first passion. As the boy is becoming a man, the bazaar becomes emblematic for the difficulty of the adult world, in which the boy proves unable to navigate. Boyish fantasies are dashed by the realities of life in Dublin. The first three stories are all narrated in the first-person, and they all have nameless boys as their narrators. All three narrators seem sensitive and intelligent, with keen interests in learning and a propensity for fantasy. Joyce, still in his early twenties when he wrote Dubliners, clearly drew on his own personal experiences more directly in writing these three tales. The namelessness of all three boys also encourages interpreters to identify them with Joyce, although from an interpretive point of view this move does little to illuminate the stories.

"Araby"'s key theme is frustration, as the boy deals with the limits imposed on him by his situation. The protagonist has a series of romantic ideas, about the girl and the wondrous event that he will attend on her behalf. But on the night when he awaits his uncle's return so that he can go to the bazaar, we feel the boy's frustration mounting. For a time, the boy fears he may not be able to go at all. When he finally does arrive, the bazaar is more or less over. His fantasies about the bazaar and buying a great gift for the girl are revealed as ridiculous. For one thing, the bazaar is a rather tawdry shadow of the boy's dreams. He overhears the conversation of some of the vendors, who are ordinary English women, and the mundane nature of the talk drives home that there is no escape: bazaar or not, the boy is still in Dublin, and the accents of the vendors remind the reader that Dublin is a colonized city.

The boy has arrived too late to do any serious shopping, but quickly we see that his tardiness does not matter. Any nice gift is well beyond the protagonist's price range. We know, from the description of the boy's housing situation and the small sum his uncle gives him, that their financial situation is tight. Though his anticipation of the event has provided him with pleasant daydreams, reality is much harsher. He remains a prisoner of his modest means and his city.

Summary:

Eveline sits at the window, watching the avenue. She thinks of her family, and the neighbors. Years ago, the children on the avenue used to play on a field where now stand many houses. She and her siblings are now grown up, and her mother is dead. Eveline is nineteen years old, and she is planning to leave Ireland forever. She works very hard, at a store and also at home, where she cares for her old father. She won't miss her job in the store. She has mixed feelings about her father. He can be cruel, and though he doesn't beat her, as he did her brothers, he often threatens her with violence. With her brothers gone (Ernest is dead and Harry is often away on business) there is no one to protect her. She takes care of two young siblings and gives over her whole salary for the family, but her father is always accusing her of being a spendthrift.

She is going to leave Ireland for good with a sailor named Frank. He has a home in Buenos Ayres. Frank treats her respectfully and with great tenderness, and he entertains her with stories about his travels around the world. Her father dislikes him.

Still, she loves her father and regrets the idea of leaving him in his old age. At times he can be kind. She remembers her mother's death, when she promised her mother to keep the home together as long as she could. Her mother lived a life "of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness" (33). She finished babbling the enigmatic phrase "Derevaun Seraun!" again and again. The fear of that memory strengthens the resolve in Eveline to leave.

But at the station, with the boat ready to leave, she is paralyzed. She cannot go; the world is too frightening. "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He [Frank] was drawing her into them: he would drown her" (34). Frank calls to her, trying to get her to board with the rush of people. She merely stares at him as if he is a stranger.

Analysis

Yet again, this story focuses on the theme of escape. While the young boy narrators of the previous stories are too young to leave Ireland or do anything about their poverty, Eveline has been given a chance. Yet in the end, the girl finds herself incapable of going.

Certainly, she has every reason to leave. The portrait we have of her family life is less than heart-warming. We see that she has taken on an incredible part of the burden in keeping the family together, as her mother did before her. Her father, despite the points he wins for not beating her, is a domineering and unfair man, who makes his daughter work and then keeps her wages. Rather than appreciate her sacrifices, he ridicules her. Unpleasant characters in Joyce's works often criticize the Irishman who leaves Ireland, the most common sentiment being that these expatriates are ungrateful children of their country. Joyce, himself an expatriate, turns this insult around in "Eveline": we see not an ungrateful child, but an ungrateful parent. Eveline's stifling family life becomes a metaphor for the trap that is Ireland.

Her mother provides the chilling example of what it means to be a grateful child, and to do what is expected: we learn that she lived a life "of commonplace sacrifices closing in final craziness" (33). At the end of her life she is true Irish, babbling in Ireland's native language (which nationalists had been trying to revitalize). However, the phrase she utters repeatedly is probably nonsense; at best it is corrupt Gaelic. The meaninglessness of the phrase suggests, metaphorically, that the sacrifices have also been meaningless. Eveline's mother has earned nothing but madness.

The stages-of-life structure continues. Eveline is adult, a young woman old enough to get married. Joyce gives us in concise detail the terrible poverty and pressure of her situation. The weight of poverty and family responsibilities bear down on this young woman heavily; her financial situation is far worse than that of the three boy narrators of the previous stories. She is trapped in an ugly situation, responsible for her siblings and the aging father who abuses her.

Paralysis is a common theme in Dubliners, and poor Eveline finds herself unable to move forward. She lacks the courage and strength to make that leap that will free her of her oppressive situation. She's too scared to leave Ireland, and sees her lover as a possible source of danger: "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He [Frank] was drawing her into them: he would drown her" (34). But her paralysis will cost her. Instead of an uncertain but hopeful future, she faces a certain and dismal future that may well repeat her mother's sad life story.

Summary:

The story opens with the end of a race in Dublin. The Irish onlookers have no Irish cars to cheer for, but they pour their enthusiasm into supporting the French, their fellow Catholics and (usually unreliable) allies.

In one of the French cars, four young men are in particularly high spirits: Charles Ségouin, the owner of the car; André Rivere, a French-Canadian electrician; Villona, a Hungarian; and Jimmy Doyle, a "neatly groomed" young Irishman.

Jimmy Doyle's father, we learn, was once an advanced Nationalist (a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, in its heyday led by Charles Parnell, which favored legislative independence for Ireland). Very quickly, he modified his views. He became rich in the butchering business, winning a police contract and becoming sufficiently wealthy to be called a "merchant prince" in local papers. He sent Jimmy to a Catholic college in England, to Dublin University to study law, and to Cambridge for a term "to see a little life." At Cambridge he met Ségouin, whose father is rumored to be one of the wealthiest men in France. Villona is another Cambridge friend, charming enough, but unfortunately he is very poor.

Villona and Jimmy go to Jimmy's house to dress before going to dine at Ségouin's hotel. At Jimmy's house his parents are full of both pride and trepidation, eager to impress their continental guest. At dinner that night, the four young men are joined by Routh, an English acquaintance of Ségouin's from Cambridge. Ségouin is an excellent host. At one point, an argument between Jimmy and the English Routh threatens to spoil the evening, but Ségouin aptly defuses the situation.

That night on their walk, the young men run into Farley, a wealthy young American. All six men go out in a car, take a train, and then head out to the American's yacht. They sing and dance, and then take a light supper. They drink endlessly. They play cards, while Villona goes to the piano and plays for them. Jimmy is so drunk he's not sure what's happening, but he knows he's losing. At the end of the game, he and Farley are the heaviest losers; Jimmy has no idea how much he's lost. He knows he will regret it the next morning, but for now he is grateful for the fog of his drunkenness. As he leans his elbows on the table and rests his head in his hands, the cabin door opens and Villona stands in the early morning light, telling the men that daybreak has come.

Analysis

The title of the story is the tale's first metaphor. "The race" refers not only to the automobile race but also to the race for empire played out by the great European powers in the nineteenth century. By the dawn of the twentieth century, this race was more or less over. The imperialist powers had carved up a substantial portion of the world, with England and France having taken many of the choicest bits of territory.

Joyce expresses Ireland's position in the world concisely with the implicit parallel between the automobile race and the race for Empire: in the automobile race, there is no car from Ireland. The Irish have no choice but to cheer on the cars from France, as the French are fellow Catholics and a traditional Irish ally. Historically, however, the French were abysmally unreliable allies for the Irish; the French Republic's support never brought Ireland an inch closer to liberty. But the Irish, not having a place in the race (imperial or automobile), have little choice but to cheer on the French.

As the title indicates, we are dealing with the world after the consolidation of the great colonial empires. What place, then, does Ireland have in the world? What place does a young Irishman, the son of an upwardly mobile rich merchant, have in the cosmopolitan world of wealthy international elites?

As Joyce depicts it, wealthy Irish are naturally at a disadvantage when rubbing elbows with the elites of the continent or America. Joyce lampoons Jimmy's parents rather mercilessly. We learn that Jimmy's father is far less interested in the political good of his country than in protection of his own interests. Though in his youth he was an advanced Nationalist, he quickly became more conservative. The family's ascent begins with this act of compromise. And their real wealth comes when he takes a police contract, supplying meat to the forces that upheld British rule. Young Jimmy, no matter how wealthy, is the citizen of a colony. His nation cannot walk as an equal among others, and his father has a role in keeping their country a colony.

The Doyle family's emphasis on riches is somewhat distasteful. They evaluate Jimmy's friendships in terms of his friends' wealth. Ségouin's fabulous wealth is reason enough for Jimmy to befriend him. Joyce takes on a wry tone when he tells us the Doyles' opinion of Villanova: "Villanova was entertaining also ­ a brilliant pianist ­ but unfortunately, very poor" (36). The crassness of their evaluation emphasizes that the Doyles are not part of Ségouin's world. The Frenchman does not need to evaluate people based on their money. He has plenty of it, and has never worked for it. The Doyles cannot say the same. In their eagerness to please their son's friends from the Continent, they only prove their provinciality. Their inability to maintain the wealthy Frenchman's charm, ease, and pleasant detachment highlights the difference between their nouveau riche Irish background and Ségouin's old money.

Jimmy is less than impressive. He is something of a dilettante, a mediocre student without any outstanding characteristics. He is relegated rather firmly to sidekick status among these men: never does Jimmy plan anything, though Dublin is his city. Ségouin is the one playing gamemaster and host. Jimmy's only along for the ride.

And Jimmy's evening costs him. Though he is allowed to play with the rich, he cannot afford their expenses. Although he has a wonderful time early in the evening, he loses badly in the card game, and his heavy drinking will lead to a throbbing headache. We are reminded by Jimmy's night of Dublin's provinciality. As this story depicts it, part of Irish identity is a peripheral status compared to the centers of world power. This status transfers to her people. Powerlessness is a theme: throughout the whole story, the Doyles play by the rules others have made. They can prosper and play, but never on their own terms.

Summary:

On a mild August evening, two young men are on a walk. The listener is squat, ruddy, dressed like a young man, but his body and face are prematurely aged. He seems to enjoy tremendously the other man's story. The listener's name is Lenehan. The teller's name is Corley. Corley is telling Lenehan about a girl who works as a housekeeper. She's his new amusement. In crude terms, he talks about how they met and the fun they've had. He thinks she's up to the task of avoiding pregnancy. He's told her that he has no job with the aim of stifling any desire she might have had to marry him.

Corley is the son of an inspector of police, who is probably dead (although Joyce is unclear about this). He's inherited something of his father's walk and manner. He's a large, oily man, always sweaty, who speaks without listening to others. When he's talking, he's usually discussing himself.

The two men continue to discuss women. A good "slavey" (servant girl), they agree, is the best kind of girl to have. Corley used to go for girls off the South Circular, a once-elegant road where the girls would accept his gifts but refuse his sexual advances.

His girl is now engaged in prostitution, Corley believes. Lenehan keeps asking if Corley can "bring it off" all right. Corley keeps replying that he can.

The time for Corley's meeting with the girl approaches. Lenehan keeps asking if he can have a look at the girl, which makes Corley nervous. The two men have planned for Corley to go with the girl and meet later with Lenehan. While Lenehan walks around, he regrets having to wait so long alone; he's not sure how to amuse himself. The loneliness makes him moody, and he reflects on his age (31) and the fatigue he already feels. He's horribly poor, and has few prospects for improving this condition. He thinks about the friendships and loves of his life, and how in the end these intimates proved unreliable. He eats a miserable supper of peas and ginger beer, but he finds this meal satisfying.

When he returns to meet Corley at the appointed hour, he sees Corley with the girl and judges their expressions to mean that Corley will fail to "bring it off." But when Corley finally arrives alone, and Lenehan asks eagerly if he succeeded, Lenehan grimly presents a beautiful golden coin.

Analysis

Undoubtedly the seediest story in Dubliners, "Two Gallants" hammers home the fact that Joyce had no interest in presenting Dublin in a positive light. The two directionless young men are repulsive on every level. The title has a bit of gleeful irony, and Joyce gives neither man so much as a single redeeming quality. Joyce even makes them ugly.

Poverty is never romanticized in Joyce's work, perhaps because his experience with it was personal. In creating his multifaceted portrait of Dublin life, he used stories like "Two Gallants" to show the aimlessness of many young urban men. Unlike the dilettante Doyle of the last story, these men cannot indulge themselves during their directionless days. Neither man has a good job, and neither man has many opportunities for advancement. So all energy is directed in search of easy money for drink, and easy women for sex.

Lenehan's time alone gives Joyce a chance to hammer home the tawdriness of the men's existence. Lenehan's lessons in life have been hard and ugly. He cannot count on friends or women, and he believes his poverty will endure. This is Dublin for a large class of people, according to Joyce's vision. With little to count on or aim for, the pursuit of easy women and drink is the logical course of action.

The ending comes as a bit of a surprise: what Corley is attempting to "bring off" is never made clear until he presents the coin. His grim expression is ambiguous, and indicates at least the possibility of guilt, though nothing more than speculation is possible. At any rate, even if Corley feels guilty, it has not stopped him from keeping the money. Corley has sweet-talked the girl into giving both her body and some cash, after speaking of her with his friend without the slightest bit of respect.

Summary:

Mrs. Mooney, a butcher's daughter, married one of her father's foreman. Her husband descended into alcoholism, ruining the family business and becoming increasingly violent until Mrs. Mooney procured a separation.

She took the last of their money and set herself up in a boarding house. Her tenants there consist mainly of tourists and artistes from the music halls. She supervises things firmly and with great competence. Sunday nights, there is a little reunion with music and gaiety.

Her daughter Polly is nineteen and lively. She works in the boarding house, because Mrs. Mooney wants to give her a run of the young men. She flirts with them, but none of the men are serious about her. Eventually, she begins an affair with a man named Mr. Doran. Everyone seems to know about it, including Mrs. Mooney, who bides her time.

Finally, Mrs. Mooney intervenes. She first confronts Polly, who confesses all. And then she tells Polly what she intends to do: she will confront Mr. Doran and tell him that he must marry Polly.

Mr. Doran is a man of thirty-four or thirty-five. He has a respectable job in a great Catholic wine-merchant's business. In his youth, he was a womanizer who proudly announced his atheism. But he'd become a church-going man with a good job, and he could not risk it. We first see him shaving, and he is having great difficulty: last night when he went to confession, the priest dragged out the details of the affair in embarrassing detail. Doran knows now that he has no choice but to marry the girl or run away. He thinks about his job. But his family will not approve: her father was a scoundrel, and her mother's boarding house is getting a bad reputation. Her grammar is bad.

Polly comes in and tells him that her mother knows everything now. He comforts her as she cries. He remembers how their affair began, and how thoughtful she has been. Perhaps they can be happy. A servant named Mary enters and announces that Mrs. Mooney would like to see him.

Mr. Doran goes downstairs and passes Jack Mooney, Polly's brother. Jack is strong and belligerent, a drinker who likes getting into fights. He is very touchy on the subject of his sister's honor. Jack gives Mr. Doran a dirty look as Mr. Doran passes.

Back in the room, Polly cries and then rests and then refreshes her eyes with water. Resting on the bed, she looks at the pillows and dreams of happiness. At last, she hears her mother's voice calling her: Mr. Doran has something important to say to her.

Analysis

By this point, observant readers might notice a trend in the previous three stories. "Araby," detailing a boy's first crush, closes off the first set of stories about youth and childhood. "Eveline" inaugurates a series of stories dealing with various kinds of marriage and courtship. In "Eveline," marriage presents the possibility of escape. "Two Gallants" reduces marriage and courtship to its animal level, and makes even that secondary to the pursuit of money. "The Boarding House" gives us marriage as a social convention and a trap. We are light years from the boyish enthusiasm of "Araby." Here, we have the ugly maneuverings of a woman trying to rope down a respectable match for her daughter. "Two Gallants" gave us seedy men taking advantage of a young woman. "The Boarding House" gives us a more respectable social setting, but the basic cynicism about love and relationships between the genders remains.

One of the striking elements of the story is Mrs. Mooney's silence. Her daughter's honor is not really a concern, because she knows about the affair from the start. What matters to her is trading on her feigned outrage to get a social arrangement that will benefit her daughter.

The theme of powerlessness is conveyed in Mr. Doran's situation. As with many other characters in Dubliners, various social pressures (his job, his reputation, Catholic guilt over the affair) combine to rob him of choice. The final climactic choice is not really a choice at all; Joyce omits the confrontation between Mr. Doran and Mrs. Mooney, because the pressures on Mr. Doran are so strong that the reader knows what Mr. Doran will have to do.

Love is not even a consideration, and the Mooneys seem unbothered that the marriage is based on trickery. Mrs. Mooney manipulates the weaker Mr. Doran, using his concern for his job and his fear of scandal. We can infer that Jack Mooney, Polly's brother, also has some idea what is going on. Fear of Jack also plays a tiny part in Mr. Doran's final decision. The end result is a marriage based on bullying and manipulation. But somehow, it doesn't seem to matter to Polly. She contents herself with pleasant dreams of the future; as far as she is concerned, security is the key issue. A trapped husband is a faithful husband. Nor, for all her feigned innocence, does she really not know what to do. The last glimpse of Polly reveals a woman every bit as sneaky as her mother. She knows well that her mother will take care of things for her. When she is called downstairs to see Mr. Doran, presumably to hear his marriage proposal, she is not in the least bit surprised.

Summary:

Eight years ago Little Chandler saw his friend Gallagher off at the North Wall. Gallagher went off to London, and since then has become a great journalist. Chandler is to meet him that night, and he's growing increasingly excited.

He's called "Little Chandler" despite his more or less average height because he gives the impression of being small and childlike. He waits at his desk in the King's Inns, where he works as either a scrivener or clerk, thinking of the people outside the office window and the melancholy of life. He thinks of the books of poetry on his shelves; sometimes he is seized by the desire to read something to his wife, but his timidity holds him back.

His workday ends and he sets off for Corless's, one of Dublin's most cosmopolitan bars and the appointed meeting place. He remembers Ignatius Gallagher as he was eight years ago. He had always been wild, mixing with rough fellows, borrowing money on all sides. Something in him suggested future greatness.

Little Chandler nurses vague dreams of being a poet. The dominant note of his poetry would be melancholy; perhaps some of the English critics would recognize him as one of the Celtic school.

At Corless's, Gallagher greets him enthusiastically. He has aged badly. They talk about their old gang of friends; most have either settled down for unremarkable careers or have gone to the dogs. They talk, Little Chandler shy in the company of his outspoken friend; among the topics is how Little Chandler has never traveled. The farthest he's been from Ireland is the Isle of Man. Gallagher has knocked about the great cities of Western Europe. Little Chandler finds something upsetting about Gallagher: "There was something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed before" (72). While Gallagher is on the subject of Paris, and the vivacity of its life, Little Chandler keeps asking if Paris is "an immoral city" (72). Gallagher laughs at Chandler's provincial attitudes and shocks him with stories of religious houses in Europe and the wild revelries of the aristocracy.

The conversation turns back to Chandler. He has been married for over a year, and they have a baby boy. Chandler invites Gallagher over to see the wife and child, but Gallagher time in Ireland is too short and busy to permit a visit. The next time Gallagher comes, the men say, and to clinch it, at Chandler's insistence, they have another drink. Little Chandler feels the difference between his life and Gallagher's. He can't help but be jealous; he's Gallagher's superior in birth and education, but Gallagher has been so much more successful.

The subject of marriage comes up. Gallagher says he may never get married, and that if he does it won't be for a while yet. He has no plans to "put my head in the sack"; Chandler says with a touch too much vehemence, "You'll put your head in the sack . . . like everyone else if you can find the girl" (76). Gallagher says that if he does marry, it will be for money.

Later that night, Chandler is at home holding his baby. He came home late and forgot to get the coffee for his wife. His wife Annie went out herself to do some late shopping, putting the sleeping baby into his arms. Looking at his wife's picture, he resents her for not being a voluptuous exotic woman of the continent. All of the furniture, chosen by Annie, seems "prim and pretty." He feels as if he is imprisoned. He opens a volume of Byron's poems, and reads a rather trite poem with a melancholy tone. He wonders if he could express himself in such a way. As he tries to get through the poem, the child wakes up and starts to cry. He tries to soothe it, but when the child keeps crying he bends toward the child's face and screams "Stop!"

After that, there's no calming the child. Annie comes home, and the boy is still crying. She angrily asks Chandler what he's done to it. She tries to calm him. Chandler stands by, tears of remorse in his eyes.

Analysis

Chandler's paralysis is thrown into sharp contrast by Gallagher's remarkable career. The key to Gallagher's success, naturally, has been leaving Ireland. Little Chandler can only delight so much in his old friend's position. Mostly, Gallagher serves as a reminder of how trapped Little Chandler really is. Chandler has vague aspirations of publishing his poetry, but it soon becomes obvious that Gallagher is not the man to help it.

The entrapment on Little Chandler is more than geographical. As Joyce depicts it, Ireland forms a kind of mental prison for him. His melancholy temperament and his aspirations of being recognized as part of the Celtic school reveal him as, at best, a hackneyed and provincial poet. The "Celtic Twilight" poetry, which catered to English stereotypes and preconceptions, has since been judged as tritely melancholy and whimsical poetry of dubious quality. Joyce himself was known to have contempt for their brand of writing.

Chandler's mental imprisonment extends to his questions about Gallagher's travels. He asks again and again if Paris is a "moral city," as if that were a simple question, as if morality were something to be measured on a scale of one to ten. Of course, his provincial standard for evaluating a city's morality uses Dublin as the example of an ethically upright town. (This position is all the more amusing because of the last few stories we've read, in which we've been treated to a broad spectrum of cheating, manipulation, abuse, and unkindness.)

Gallagher is not exactly a charming figure, either. He seems to delight in shocking Little Chandler, and he is rather offhand in his treatment of his friend. While he has made the big move to London, which has enabled his career to go places it would never have gone in Dublin, gaining worldliness does not always guarantee tremendous gains in kindness or compassion.

But Gallagher's off-putting character traits only make Chandler more resentful. He feels that Gallagher does not deserve the success he's had. And because he feels his imprisonment all the more acutely, he takes it out on his child. We learn about the many things restraining Chandler: the furniture is still being paid for, and his wife decides how to decorate the house. The child's needs make it impossible for Chandler to make time to read. As he tries to read the Byron poem and the child cries, Chandler realizes that he will not be able to break free of his obligations. His abuse of his son, his one small moment of freedom, is followed by the natural negative consequences, including remorse. Moreover, the little outburst does not make Chandler any less trapped.

Summary:

Farrington, a scrivener in a legal office, is called to see his tyrannical boss, Mr. Alleyne. After a few solid minutes of abuse, he is allowed to return to work with a strict deadline for copying a contract. Farrington returns to work, but as soon as he sits down the tedium of his job gets to him. He goes out for a drink. He goes down the street into dark, comfy O'Neill's shop. He takes a glass of plain porter. The respite is short, however, because Farrington has to return to work. On his way in he notices the smell of the perfume of one of the clients, Miss Delacour. The chief clerk tells him sharply that Mr. Alleyne has been looking for him. The copy of the correspondence for the Delacour case is needed. Farrington gets the correspondence, hoping that Mr. Alleyne won't notice that the last two letters are missing. Miss Delacour is a wealthy middle-aged woman, and Mr. Alleyne is said to be sweet "on her or her money."

Farrington drops off the correspondence and returns to work. Glumly, he realizes that he will not be able to meet his deadline for the contract he's currently copying. He begins to think longingly of a night of drink. His pleasant dreams are interrupted by a furious Mr. Alleyne. With Miss Delacour standing by, Mr. Alleyne abuses Farrington about the missing letters. Farrington plays dumb. Mr. Alleyne asks rhetorically, "Do you think me an utter fool?", to which Farrington replies, " I don't think, sir . . . that that's a fair question to put to me" (87). Miss Delacour smiles. Mr. Alleyne goes bezerk, demanding an apology.

Later, Farrington waits around a corner hoping to get the cashier alone, so that he can ask to borrow some money. But when the cashier exits the office, he's with the chief clerk. Now, there's no hope in getting a bit of cash. The situation is grim: he had to apologize abjectly in private to Mr. Alleyne, and now the office will be a treacherous place for him.

It dawns on Farrington that he can pawn his watch. He gets six shillings and goes out drinking with his friends. He tells them the story of his triumph over Mr. Allyene, leaving out his abject apology. He repeats the story to various friends as they come in. First Nosey Flynn, sitting in his usual corner of Davy Byrne's, and then O' Halloran and Paddy Leonard come in. The men are buying each other drink after drink. Higgins, one of Farrington's colleagues at work, comes in, and does his own rendition of the tale, making Farrington's feat seem even greater. The men leave the bar to go to another establishment called the Scotch House. Leonard introduces them to a young fellow named Weathers, who's an acrobat and an artiste. More drinks are shared. When the Scotch House closes, they go to Mulligan's. One of the women catches Farrington's eye, but when she leaves she does not look back. He curses his poverty and all the drinks he's bought. He particularly thinks that Weathers has been drinking more than he's been buying.

The men are talking about strength; Weathers is showing off his biceps. Farrington shows off his, and then the two men arm wrestle. Weathers beats Farrington. Farrington is angry, and accuses Weathers of having put the weight of his body behind it. They decide to go two out of three, and Weathers, after a struggle of respectable duration, beats him again. The curate, who was watching, expresses his admiration and Farrington snaps out of him. O'Halloran notices the anger in Farrington's face and wisely intercedes. He changes the subject and calls for another drink.

Waiting for his tram home, Farrington is full of fury. He's not even drunk, and he's spent almost all of the money from his pawned watch. He's lost his reputation as a strong man, having been beaten in arm wrestling by young Weathers. As he goes home, his anger mounts.

He comes home to find the kitchen empty with the fire nearly out. His small son Tom, one of five children, comes to greet him. His wife is out at church. Farrington orders the boy around, telling him to cook up the dinner his wife left for him. The boy obediently gets to work. Then Farrington sees that the fire has gone out. He chases the boy with a walking stick and begins to beat him brutally, despite the child's pleas for mercy.

Analysis

This story, like "The Dead," is difficult to summarize because of Joyce's amazingly concise group scenes. Among authors, Joyce is among the best for conveying the atmosphere of boisterous social gatherings with clarity and charm.

The themes of imprisonment, powerlessness, and resentment are all weaved together in this well-wrought story. Farrington spends a good part of the tale simply trying to scrape together enough money for a night of drink. It becomes clear rather quickly that he is an alcoholic, and that each day must be spent seeking out a way to get drunk.

His powerlessness comes through in his great confrontation with Mr. Alleyne. Farrington is allowed his moment of triumph, but it is followed by a forced abject apology. He endures humiliation in the end, with the assurance that if life at work was already hell, it is bound to become even worse.

Farrington is not allowed to triumph anywhere. At work, his boss forces him into submission. At the bar, the woman who catches his eye ignores him. He is bested by the young Weathers in a contest of strength. Emasculated at work, he is further emasculated by the woman and among his friends. He excels in no arena of masculinity.

He does not even succeed in his original aim, which was to get drunk. After the considerable quantity of alcohol he has consumed, we can only see his increased tolerance as another sign of his alcoholism. He refers to his desire for alcohol as "thirst" throughout the whole story.

As Little Chandler does in the previous story, Farrington takes out his anger on the nearest helpless target: his son. The beating scene is awful, especially as the boy has been touchingly attentive to his father's needs. We are left with the impression that this day is unfortunately typical in Farrington's life.

Summary:

Maria works at the Dublin by Lamplight laundry, a charitable institution run by protestants. The laundry is for fallen women and alcoholics, and busies them with useful work; Maria is not one of its charity cases, but is a regular worker who helps keep things together. She is known as a peacemaker and a thoroughly competent woman. She boards there, and she enjoys her work; she has even come to like the Protestants who work there. She got the work through the help of her friends, Joe and Alphy, two brothers whom she helped to raise.

Tonight is All Hallow's Eve, or Hallowe'en. She is going over to Joe's to enjoy an evening of fun and singing with Joe and his family. When work is finished, she's happy to go and get ready for the celebration. In her little bedroom, she gets dressed. She also remembers that tomorrow is a holy day of obligation, so she sets her alarm for six instead of seven. She notes to herself that her body is still trim and in shape despite her age, and sets off.

She looks forward to the evening, and reflects on the simple joy of her independence. She also reflects sadly on Joe and Alphy: though they are brothers and were once the best of friends, they are no longer speaking to each other. For the children, she buys some penny cakes at Downe's. Then she goes to a shop in Henry Street, where she fusses over getting a perfect slice of plum cake as a special treat. It costs two shillings and four pence, a princely sum for Maria. On the tram, she fears she is going to have to stand; the young men simply stare at her. But finally an older gentleman lets her have his seat. They chat about Hallow Eve and the treats.

At Joe's house she is greeted warmly, and she gives the children their cakes. But in a panic she realizes she cannot find the plum cake. She asks the children if they have taken it and eaten it by mistake, and the children resentfully reply that they haven't. Finally, she accepts that she must have left it on the tram. When she thinks of the expense and the surprise she wanted to give them, she nearly cries.

Joe and Maria sit by the fire. He is exceedingly nice to her, playing host and pressing her to drink. She tries to bring up the matter of Alphy, but Joe becomes very angry. Mrs. Donnelly also tries to put in a word in favor of reconciliation, but this nearly starts a fight until Joe calms himself and insists on dropping the subject.

They start to play the traditional Irish divination games of Hallowe'en, where one is led blindfolded to a table and made to pick out an object. The girls from next-door put out the objects. The chosen object predicts the future. When Maria takes her turn, she feels something wet and slippery. She hears some muffled words, and Mrs. Donnely says crossly that the object is not appropriate. She insists that it be thrown out. Maria chooses again, and gets a prayer book.

After that, the children move on to another game. Joe presses Maria to drink, and Mrs. Donnelly says lightly that Maria will enter a convent because she chose the prayer book. Soon, Joe and Mrs. Donnelly pressure Maria to sing. Maria shyly sings I Dreamt that I Dwelt. She sings the first verse twice, but no one corrects her. The song moves Joe to tears.

Analysis

Joyce's portrait of Maria is one of his most skilful accomplishments in the collection. Certainly, she is one of the book's most appealing characters.

She is a hard-working, good-hearted old woman. She is tolerant, not unwilling to work among Protestants or social outcasts. She works hard at the shelter, helping fallen women to begin a new life. Her Protestants are tolerant of her religion, but will not make allowances for her religious obligations: we see her setting the alarm for six in the morning, so that she can attend mass before work the next day.

Poverty, as before, is a theme. Maria's loss of the cake is especially painful because the price was such an exorbitant one, considering her modest means. Here we see a character trying to treat her loved ones despite her limited funds. Her loss of the cake is especially sad in this light.

Subtle hints about previously higher socio-economic status are dropped. For one thing, these two brothers she nursed seem well off enough, though not wealthy. And the song that she sings, repeating the first verse twice, comes from a work about a woman who moves from riches to rags. When Joe cries, he may be weeping because Maria's own situation is mirrored by the song.

But there are other reasons to weep. The tone of much of the story is poignant, sweet and sad at once, which is somewhat rare in this collection. Most of the stories have a much harder edge. This story is yet another tale dealing with relationships between generations, and Joe may be weeping because his beloved Maria is not long for this world. She is an old woman, whose life has not been easy. And the object she chooses during the divination game is clay: traditionally, this object was the omen of approaching death.

Summary:

Middle-aged and solitary, Mr. James Duffy lives in a house in Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin. His home is small and orderly. The narrator describes the place in some detail. There are books ordered on the shelves according to bulk, simple and completely functional pieces of furniture, and a well-ordered desk.

His days are run by a schedule, and the schedule is always the same. He has a well-paying job at a bank. He comes in the morning by tram; eats lunch at Dan Burke's; leaves work at four; takes dinner at an eating-house on George's street, where fashionable young people will not bother him; and spends his evenings either in front of his landlady's piano or out to enjoy a Mozart opera or concert. He is not a churchgoer, and he has no friends. He sees his family only at Christmas and funerals.

One evening in the rotunda, he is at a thinly attended concert when the woman next to him makes a casual comment about the unfortunately small audience. She has an intelligent, attractive face, with eyes revealing a sensible nature. He takes her comment as an invitation to talk, and they do. She is with her daughter. A few weeks later, he sees her again. He tries to strike up a more intimate conversation while the daughter is distracted. The woman, whose name is Mrs. Emily Sinico, has mentioned her husband. Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico meet a third time by accident, and this time Mr. Duffy is bold enough to invite her to meet with him again sometime. They begin to see each other regularly, always in the evening and in rather obscure neighborhoods. Mr. Duffy, who doesn't like the secrecy of these meetings, insists on seeing her at her own home. Captain Sinico is always traveling on business, but he encourages the visits because he thinks Mr. Duffy is interested in his daughter. The idea of his wife being attractive or desirable never occurs to him.

Mr. Duffy shares his ideas with her, and she opens up to him. He loans her books and music. They become very close. He tells her of his former experiences with the Irish Socialist party; the meetings did not appeal to him, as the other men were all workers with very practical concerns. When the party divided, he stopped going to meetings. No revolution in thinking would come of these men; their concerns were too pragmatic to change the world. She asks Mr. Duffy why he doesn't write out his thoughts, and he scorns the idea; recognition from the unrigorous and conventional-minded masses means nothing to him.

They spend more and more time alone together, including evenings at her college. They speak of personal matters. One night, when speaking of the individual's insurmountable loneliness, she takes his hand passionately and presses it to her cheek. Mr. Duffy is surprised; she has misunderstood. He does not see her for a week, and then sends word asking to meet her. The meet in a cakeshop near the Parkgate, and then walk in Phoenix Park for three hours. They agree that they cannot meet again.

His life continues in its orderly fashion. He reads some Nietzsche and avoids concerts, for fear of seeing her. Life goes on. Finally, one night when his is out dining he is reading the paper when he sees something that stops him. He reads the same piece again and again, unable to eat; he tries to finish his meal, but must stop after a few mouthfuls. When he goes home that night, he reads the paper again. It is an article about the death of Mrs. Sinico. She was struck accidentally by a train; evidence suggests that she was drunk. Her daughter Mary reveals that lately Mrs. Sinico often drank at night.

Mr. Duffy is at first disgusted by the story; she seems to him crude and degraded for having fallen into drink and having died in such an undignified manner. Then the memory of her hand touching his hits him, and he goes out to the pub at Chapelizod Bridge. He drinks there for a while, becoming more ill at ease. He struggles with the two images he now has of her: the lonely drunkard and the charming woman he became close to. He wonders if he could have done more for her. He goes out on a walk, even though it is biting cold.

He thinks of her lonely life, and his, which will simply continue in the same routine until he dies. As he walks, he almost believes that she is there with him; it seems as if his memory is so strong that he can hear her voice, or feel her hand. From a hill, he looks down at the wall of the park, where he sees lovers lying. He feels outcast from human life. He knows the lovers are aware of his presence and want him to leave; so they, too, reject him. He hears a train. The engine seems to be repeating her name.

He stops to rest under a tree until the rhythm fades. But then he can no longer hear her voice or feel her presence. All is silent: he is completely alone.

Analysis

"A Painful Case" is another story dealing with isolation. Yet another failed or distorted love story, Joyce uses allusion to make his own tale more biting. The site of the affair, Phoenix park, was the supposed location for parts of the tale of Tristram and Iseult, the passionate but doomed lovers of Arthurian legend. Tristram and Iseult were legendary for their passion, and were two beautiful people in the prime of life. Joyce juxtaposes this background to Mr. Duffy and Mrs. Sinico, middle-aged and participating in an entirely sexless affair.

Mr. Duffy's imprisonment is self-imposed. He is terrifyingly alone and isolated, but he has chosen this life for himself. He is also prudish, as we can see in his treatment of Mrs. Sinico. Duffy lacks the courage or imagination to pursue happiness with Mrs. Sinico, despite the fact that both people are clearly dissatisfied with their current situations. However, Mr. Duffy does not realize the extent of his loneliness until it is too late.

One of his great failures is his basic lack of empathy, as seen in his experience with the socialist group. He is more concerned with abstractions than wages, and he cannot seem to empathize on a meaningful level with the workers in the group. Later, his cold treatment of Mrs. Sinico stems from this same shortage of empathy.

The story of Mrs. Sinico's death is the catalyst for Mr. Duffy's revelation. The circumstances surrounding her demise seem to suggest that suicide was a possibility, although Mrs. Sinico may merely have been drunk. The coroner's report indicated that she was taken completely by surprise and died of shock, although one could argue that a moving tram comes as a surprise even when one has stepped in front of it intentionally. The story's climax, as with many other stories in Dubliners, is the protagonist's epiphany. Once her presence leaves him, he realizes that he is alone, that he has been alone all along, and that he will always be alone.

Summary:

Old Jack and Mr. O'Connor warm themselves by the fire in the committee room. Jack is old, hairy, and gaunt; Mr. O'Connor, though young, is gray-haired. His face is marred by acne. He's rolling cigarettes. Mr. O'Connor was supposed to canvass one part of the ward with flyers for Mr. Richard J. Tierney's election campaign, but due to the rain he's spent most of the day in the Committee Room with Jack. Jack is complaining about his son, who's taken to boozing in a serious way.

Mr. Hynes, a young man not working for the campaign, comes in. The three men talk; it becomes clear that Jack and Mr. O'Connor are working for pay and not for political reasons. The talk turns to politics, and Hynes speaks passionately about the working man. He does not like Richard J. Tierney; he claims that Tierney is going to greet King Edward when the British monarch next visits Ireland. Mr. O'Connor at first denies it (Tierney is on the nationalist ticket), but when Hynes says to wait and see, O'Connor concedes that it's possible. But what concerns him most remains the same: "Anyway, I wish he'd turn up with the spondulics [the money]" (119). Mr. Hynes displays the ivy leaf on his coat collar, a symbol commemorating Charles Stewart Parnell. He praises Parnell, and the other men agree that he was a great man.

Mr. Henchy comes in, saying that there's no money for them yet. They discuss the voters they've been talking to, trying to convince them to vote for their man. Mr. Henchy complains about Mr. Tierney's trickiness, and doubts that his hard work will be remembered. Mr. Hynes leaves. Mr. Henchy asks what Hynes wanted; O'Connor thinks kindly of him, but Henchy thinks Hynes is a spy for Colgan, the other candidate. Old Jack thinks so too, but O'Connor is more inclined to think of Hynes kindly. Hynes is a good writer, with a political bent. Mr. Hency thinks that some of these hillsiders and fenians (the enthusiasts for the Nationalist cause) are in fact informers for the British ("in the pay of the Castle").

Father Keon enters, searching for Mr. Fanning, the sub-sheriff. They direct him to the Black Eagle. The men chat about him: the priest has gotten into some sort of trouble with Church authorities, either because of his politics or his alcoholism.

Mr. Henchy is mainly disappointed because he wasn't the promised beer Tierney is supposed to send to them. Tierney was in a meeting with an alderman, but Mr. Henchy kept discreetly reminding him about the promised drinks. Mr. Henchy complains bitterly about the corruption he sees in city government. He jokes that he'd like to be a city father himself, so that he could grow fat off the bribes of candidates. They enjoy spinning out a scenario with Mr. Henchy becoming mayor, with O'Connor as private secretary, Jack in a powdered wig, and drunken old Father Keon as the private chaplain. Old Jack tells Henchy that he'd be more stylish than the current mayor. A boy arrives with their bottles of beer. They send the boy back to fetch a corkscrew, and when he comes back they let him have a bottle himself. They make small talk, asking the boy his age (17), and then the boy quickly drinks and leaves.

Henchy complains about Crofton, one of his coworkers, saying he's not very much help as a canvasser. Crofton, a very fat man, then comes in accompanied by Lyons, a young man. Crofton and Lyons insult Henchy's canvassing methods lightly, and Henchy criticizes them in turn. The boy took the corkscrew back with him, but they open beers for the newcomers by putting the bottles onto the fire until the corks pop out.

Mr. Crofton sits silently once his bottle has popped; he considers his companions beneath him. He was with the Conservative party, but when the Conservatives withdrew their man he decided to work for Tierney, as Tierney seeming to him like the lesser of two evils. Lyons' bottle pops, and now everyone is drinking. Henchy talks about trying to get votes from people who normally vote Conservative; he aimed at selling Tierney's character, and his fiscal conservatism despite his Nationalist affiliation. Mr. Lyons asks about the impending royal visit. Henchy says that a royal visit will stimulate the economy.

Mr. O'Connor is against a royal visit. He begins to invoke Parnell, but Mr. Henchy says that Parnell is dead. Mr. Crofton nods. Mr. Lyons begins to harp on King Edward's womanizing, but Mr. Henchy defends the King as being just a normal man like everyone, fond of drink and the ladies. Lyons points out that the country turned its back on Parnell for an adulterous affair. What becomes of their ideals if they now welcome a womanizing King just because his visit stimulates the economy? The issue is evaded. O'Connor doesn't want to stir up the issue on the solemn occasion of Parnell's death. Crofton says that the Conservatives respect him now, after his death, because at least he was a gentleman.

Mr. Hynes comes in. They welcome him, offering him booze, and then Mr. Henchy points out that Hynes never abandoned Parnell, even when the Catholic Church and every other Irishman did. Mr. O'Connor entreats him to recite the poem he wrote on the occasion of Parnell's death.

Hynes solemnly recites a short, earnest poem mourning the death of the great Irish Nationalist leader. The poem is very critical of those who betrayed him, including the church. It claims a place for Parnell among the great ancient heroes of Ireland.

There is brief silence and then applause. Hynes' bottle pops open. Mr. O'Connor is deeply moved, and rolls cigarettes to hide his emotion. Mr. Henchy asks Crofton what he thinks of it. Mr. Crofton says that it's a "fine piece of writing" (133).

Analysis

Background on the politics of the day is prerequisite to understanding this story. Charles Stewart Parnell was a political hero to the Irish nationalists of Joyce's time. He died on October 6, 1891, becoming a martyr for the cause of Irish independence. His memory figures prominently in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and the title of this story refers to Ivy Day, the day commemorating Parnell's death. Parnell was the leader of the Irish Nationalists, who sought legislative independence for Ireland. But Parnell lost support because of an adulterous affair. The Church leaders of Ireland condemned him, and consequently he lost the support of many Irish Catholics. Afterward, Parnell attempted to continue to work for the cause, but he died the next year of stress and exhaustion.

Joyce juxtaposes the sharp and real divides between nationalists and conservatives to the large amount of apathy many of the men exhibit. A key issue in the story is the lack of inspiring leaders. We learn that Jack and Mr. O'Connor are working for money and the promise of free booze rather than any real political devotion to Mr. Tierney. Throughout most of the story, Mr. Henchy spends far more time worrying about the promised booze than the does worrying about the election's outcome. The problem is that the candidates, now that Parnell is gone, seem to have no great focus. Tierney is a leader Conservatives feel comfortable voting for; his politics are watered down, far from the fiery and inspiring vision of Parnell. As a realistic goal, Irish nationalism seems lost without its charismatic champion. Canvassers try to lure voters to their candidate by making claims about his character, or promising that his program will not shake up the status quo.

The portraits of the men are critical and intelligent. The effect is more humorous than cruel, but the story contributed to difficulties in publishing Dubliners. O'Hynes poem, though a touch corny, is also deeply earnest; Mr. Crofton's reserved and evidently insincere response underscores the fact that Ireland is a country divided, even against itself. Ivy Day is so called because the mourners at Parnell's funeral wore bits of Ivy; O'Hynes is wearing it here. But the title is ironic. The committee room is full of men of divided loyalties, whose only goal of the moment is to drink their beer.

Summary:

For a month, Mr. Holohan has trudged up and down Dublin making the arrangements necessary for a series of concerts. But in the end, it was the insistent Mrs. Kearney who arranged everything.

Mrs. Kearney had once been Miss Devlin, educated in a high-class convent. She was a difficult, stubborn woman with few friends. When she was being courted, she was so icy and picky that no boy seemed to please her, but when people began to talk she married Mr. Kearney, an older man and a bootmaker. Mrs. Kearney felt that he would make a good enough husband, but she never completely put aside her romantic ideas. He's pious, as is she, and both are faithful and competent spouses. Mr. Kearney is a good provider, and their daughter Kathleen gets an excellent education and learns to play music. When a renewed interest in indigenous Irish arts and artists kicks in (the "Irish Revival") Mrs. Kearney tries to promote her daughter's musical career. Mr. Holahan, secretary of the Eire Abu Society, came to ask if Kathleen would be the piano accompanist for four concerts. A contract was drawn up, in which it was agreed that Kathleen would be paid four guineas for playing.

Mrs. Kearney took an active role in the planning, putting together the program and playing a charming hostess to Mr. Holohan when he visited for their planning sessions. Mrs. Kearney buys some expensive clothes for Kathleen.

The concerts were planned for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Mrs. Kearney and Kathleen arrive on Wednesday night twenty minutes before showtime, and the place is nearly empty. Backstage, they meet Mr. Fitzpatrick, secretary of the Society. He seems to take the bad news lightly. Everyone waits until 830, hoping for more people to come, but then the few people there begin to ask for the show to start.

At the first opportunity, Mrs. Kearney calls aside Mr. Holohan to ask what will happen. He says that planning four concerts was apparently a bad choice. Mrs. Kearney criticizes the artistes, saying that they're no good. Mr. Holohan says that the real talent will come on Saturday.

Mrs. Kearney is angry for having gone to so much trouble, plus the expense for Kathleen's clothes. Mr. Fitzpatrick's pleasantly vacant manner angers her. Thursday night is better attended, but the Society decides to abandon Friday night and push heavily for Saturday. Mrs. Kearney tracks down Mr. Holohan and begins to nag him about the contract: she insists that Kathleen be paid for four nights, even though one of the nights is now cancelled. Mr. Holohan sends her to see Mr. Fitzpatrick. Mr. Fitzpatrick says he'll bring the matter before the committee. Mrs. Kearney is upset about the whole thing, and Mr. Kearney suggests going with her to the concert on Saturday.

Unfortunately, it rains on Saturday night. When the Kearney's arrive, Mrs. Kearney searches for Mr. Holohan and Mr. Fitzpatrick. An old committee member named Miss Beirne comes out, offering her assistance, but Mrs. Kearney insists on seeing a secretary and does not discuss the issue with the old woman.

The bass and the second tenor have arrived. Mr. Duggan, the bass, is a young man with a good voice. He was an understudy at a big opera, but when he given his chance to perform his stage presence had been marred by the way he absent-mindedly wiped his nose. The second tenor, Mr. Bell, is jealous of other tenors and covers it all with excessive friendliness.

Mr. and Mrs. Kearney chat about Kathleen. Kathleen talks to Miss Healy, her friend and the evening's contralto. Madam Glynn, the pale and frail-looking soprano, arrives without fanfare. Not many people seem to know her; she's from London. The first tenor and baritone arrive. Mrs. Kearney brings Kathleen over to meet them; she'd like her daughter to be on good terms with them.

Mrs. Kearney spies Mr. Holohan and tracks him down. Once again, Mr. Holohan says that the matter of payment should be brought up with Mr. Fitzpatrick. Mrs. Kearney grows shrill, demanding a guarantee and invoking their contract.

When she returns to the dressing room a journalist from the Freeman and a fellow named Mr. O'Madden Burke are there. The journalist, whose name is Mr. Hendrick, will be unable to stay for the concert, but he'll make sure that a write-up is done anyway. Mr. O'Madden Burke is to write it. Mr. Hendrick is being flirted with by Miss Healy, and he's enjoying every moment of it. He assures Mr. Holohan that the write-up will be done. The two men go off to a secluded room where stewards are opening up bottles of booze for some gentlemen, including Mr. O'Madden Burke, who has found the room by instinct. He is a respected man, with a good family name.

Meanwhile Mrs. Kearney is speaking so vehemently with her husband that he is asking her to lower her voice. The artistes grow nervous, some hiding it better than others; the audience is expecting the show to begin. Mr. Holohan comes out, and Mrs. Kearney informs him that her daughter will not play without the money. Mr. Holohan tries to appeal to Mr. Kearney and Kathleen, but Mr. Kearney strokes his beard and Kathleen looks down. Mr. Holohan goes off in a rush. The artistes look at Mrs. Kearney.

Mr. Fitzpatrick comes in with Mr. Holohan, and they give half of the money, promising the other half later. Mrs. Kearney is about to fight back, but Kathleen goes out with the first performer, Mr. Bell, who by now is shaking because he fears everyone will think he was late.

The first part of the concert goes very well. Madam Glynn's song is awful, but the other performances seem to please the audience greatly. Meanwhile, backstage everyone has divided into two camps. Mr. Holohan, Mr. Fitzpatrick, Miss Beirne, Mr. O'Madden Burke, two stewards, the baritone, and the bass are all talking in one corner. Mr. O'Madden Burke is scandalized, and says that Kathleen will not play music in Dublin again. The baritone, when pressed for his opinion, says he doesn't wish to speak ill of anyone, but he does wish Mrs. Kearney had been more considerate of the other artistes. In the other corner are Mrs. Kearney, Mr. Kearney, Mr. Bell, Miss Healy, and a young lady who recited a patriotic peace. Mrs. Kearney is railing against the unfair treatment she's received, after all of her trouble and expense. Miss Healy wants to join the other group, but she cannot because Kathleen is her good friend.

After the first part of the concert has ended, Mr. Fitzpatrick and Mr. Holohan come over and tell her the rest of the money will be paid the following Tuesday. If Kathleen does not play, the contract will be considered broken and Kathleen will receive no money. Mrs. Kearney does not budge. She wants the money immediately or her daughter will not play. Harsh words are exchanged. Mrs. Kearney is so irritating that everyone sides with the committee. Miss Healy consents to play a few accompaniments. The second part starts. Mrs. Kearney takes her husband and daughter and leads the march out. She glares at Mr. Holohan, promising she's not done with him yet. Mr. Hollohan says coldly, "But I'm done with you." She leaves, and Mr. Hollohan fumes, while Mr. O'Madden Burke assures him that he did the right thing.

Analysis

"A Mother" is yet another biting portrait, not only of Mrs. Kearney but also of the artistic scene in Dublin, such as it is. Joyce was often critical of some of the beneficiaries of the "Irish Revival," and he did not support the movement to restore the Gaelic tongue (called "Irish" by its supporters, to emphasize its supposed rightful place as the national tongue) in place of English. When Mrs. Kearney hopes to take advantage of Kathleen's very Irish name, Joyce is mocking the provinciality and faddishness of the Revival, and pointing out that the mix of nationalism and art does not always have good aesthetic results. The artistes at the show are a nervous, provincial lot. Mr. Bell's nervous jealousy of other tenors sets the tone for all of the artistes: each one of them has a list of unimpressive accomplishments, and a quite a few of them are rather petty. The listeners don't demand much, either: the surest way to please the crowd is to sing something patriotic. The small size of the audience also says something about the supposed revival of Irish arts.

As for Mrs. Kearney herself, she is a petty, grating, and inconsiderate woman. Her stubbornness and pride over the supposed slight to her daughter eventually turn everyone against her. She insists on the matter without any consideration of the fact that the Society is being squeezed financially as it is, due to the pitiful turnout for their musical performance.

Poverty is a theme here, and we see in this case how poverty and a certain stubborn pride make for an unfortunate combination. Mrs. Kearney helps with the planning, and buys expensive clothes for her daughter: it is disappointed expectation that drives her to demand stubbornly the promised eight guineas. Yet in her zealousness to ensure that her daughter's rights are respected, she destroys her daughter's chances at future employment in Dublin. Mr. O'Madden Burke says confidently that Kathleen will never play in Dublin again.

Summary:

In the lavatory, a man lies at the foot of the stairs down which he fell. The floor is filthy, and the man has injured his head. Three men carry him upstairs and lay him on the floor of the bar. The manager asks if the unconscious man had friends with him; there were two, but they are gone now. Blood is trickling from the man's head, and a policeman is sent for. A constable arrives and asks questions.

A young man in a cycling suit comes through the crowd. He washes the blood away and tends to the injury. Finally, the injured man comes to. He tries to make light of his accident. A friend of the injured man comes forward and asks what has happened. We learn that the fallen man is named Tom Kernan. Once again, Tom makes light of his fall. The friend, one Mr. Power, offers to take Tom home. With Mr. Power supporting him on one side and the young man in the cycling suit supporting him on the other, Tom makes his way out of the bar. The young man goes off and Tom and Mr. Power take a cab home. On the way back, Mr. Kernan shows Mr. Power the inside of his mouth. It's bloody, and part of his tongue has been bitten off.

Mr. Kernan is a commercial traveler who strives to maintain dignity of dress while at work. His methods are old fashioned, and he has not been a success. Mr. Power is in the employ of the Royal Irish Constabulary Office. His social ascent has been in juxtaposition to Mr. Kernan's decline.

When they get back to the Kernan home, Mr. Kernan's wife puts him to bed. Mr. Power stays for a moment, chatting about the children with their mother and then playing with them. He is surprised by their accents. Mrs. Kernan is worried about her husband; lately, he's been a drunkard. Mr. Power suggests bringing over Martin Cunningham, a respected friend. Mr. Kernan's friends will get together and try to help him with his problem.

Although the Kernans have recently celebrated their silver anniversary, and Mrs. Kernan still remembers her wedding day with great joy, just a few weeks after her wedding she already found the role of wife tedious. Still, she has been a devoted and competent wife and mother. The next day, Mr. Kernan sends a note in to work and stays in bed. His wife is not pleased.

Two nights later his friends come to see him. He does not know that Mr. Cunningham, Mr. M'Coy, and Mr. Power have plotted with his wife to bring him along to a retreat. Mr. Kernan was a Protestant before his marriage, and he is not unknown to make little jabs at Catholicism. It has been more Mr. Cunningham's idea; Mrs. Kernan does not believe that her husband will change. She herself is moderate in her faith.

Martin Cunningham is to lead the assault. He is respected and liked. His wife is a drunkard. His legal experience and occasional bits of reading have won him the respect of his circle as the resident brain.

The men make small talk about the accident. We learn about M'Coy, who has had a colorful life working all manner of jobs. The subject of his two companions that night comes up: one was Harford, a man disapproved of because he works for Jews (and it is felt by his fellow Catholics that he acts like one). The men start complaining about the constables. Mrs. Kernan brings drink, and her husband tries to joke with her; she scolds him. Then Mr. Kernan's friends began to talk in front of him about a get-together they're planning. Naturally, Mr. Kernan's interest is piqued. He asks what's going on, and they tell him they're planning a little retreat. Then, as if it had just occurred to him, Mr. Cunningham asks if Mr. Kernan would like to come. Mr. Kernan remains silent while the men start to discuss the Jesuits. None of the men are particularly well-informed; they discuss Jesuit trivia without much accuracy. Mr. Kernan chimes in, saying he likes the Jesuits because they're learned and cater to the upper classes. But when he starts to criticize priests in general, the other three men defend the Irish priesthood.

Mr. Kernan admires Cunningham tremendously and is swayed. The retreat is being led by one Father Purdon, and it's for businessmen. The men slip back into a conversation about Church doctrine and history, getting the facts all nicely muddled.

Mr. Fogarty enters. He is a local grocer with a generous heart; despite debts Mr. Kernan owes him, Mr. Fogarty brings with him a pint of whisky. The amusing conversation continues, with the men muddling names, Latin phrases, and historical events in often humorous ways. The men get to discussing Papal infallibility. Despite the fact that some Popes were "up to the knocker" (bad), Mr. Cunningham says that not one ever spoke a word of false doctrine. "Isn't that remarkable?" he asks. The men keep talking, and they don't get any better a handle on facts or history. Mrs. Kernan returns, and she listens to part of their conversation. Mr. Kernan mentions John MacHale, a famous Irish clergyman whom he saw in real life. Mr. Power tells Mrs. Kernan that Mr. Kernan is coming on the retreat with them. She hides her satisfaction. The men talk about renewing their baptismal vows, and Mr. Kernan objects strenuously to the idea of holding a candle.

Later, at the church, Mr. Kernan initially feels ill at ease. It is full of businessmen. Mr. Kernan feels more and more comfortable as he sees some familiar faces (including Mr. Hendrick, who appeared in "A Mother"). Father Purdon gets up to speak. His sermon is rather undemanding. Nothing in it would make a businessman uncomfortable. He goes so far as to call Christ a "spiritual accountant" (175). He asks the men to "verify accounts," and if something is not right, to set it right by God's grace.

Analysis

"Grace" is another tale that deals with alcoholism, but the real focus of the story is religion. By making Mr. Kernan a convert, and a rather unzealous one at that, Joyce can use this additional perspective to deal with religious life in Dublin. We see that Mr. Kernan is most definitely in need of some kind of help. The title of the story refers to the supernatural gift conferred by God on rational beings (man) so that they might be able to attain salvation. But the title is a play on words: it also refers to physical dexterity and elegance, here with a bit of a sneer, seeing as the first time we meet Mr. Kernan he has fallen down the stairs, and is passed out with a head wound and lying in the muck of a filthy lavatory floor.

Mr. Kernan needs help. His alcoholism has come on him after a long period of social decline. Mr. Powers, when seeing the children, "is surprised at their manners and at their accents" (153). Apparently, Mr. Kernan's children speak with the accent of less educated, poorer classes, showing how Mr. Kernan's fortunes have taken a turn for the worse. He has taken comfort in booze, and can no longer drink safely.

And his friends Mr. Power, Mr. Cunningham, and Mr. M'Coy react in a typically Irish Catholic way: religion, they promise Mrs. Kernan, will help Mr. Kernan with his problems. Religion in this case is something everyone seems to respect but no one seems to understand very well. The characters of this story are not particularly religious, and they certainly aren't thoughtful when it comes to spiritual matters. In a memorable sentence, Joyce tells us that Mrs. Kernan, if put to it, "could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost" (157). The banshee is a fairy spirit from Irish folklore, whose wailing is a premonition of death. Mrs. Kernan apparently puts faith in the banshee at the same level as faith in the Holy Ghost; Catholicism and superstition are jumbled together hopelessly. Later, that theme of superstition intertwining with Catholic belief comes up again, when Mr. Kernan refuses to light a candle. To his formerly Protestant mind, such a ritual smacks of silly superstitious practices.

The men are no better than Mrs. Kernan. Although Mrs. Kernan puts banshees and the Holy Ghost on a similar plane, the men have a somewhat pretentious conversation on Catholic doctrines and history, and in the process they get every important fact wrong. Their religious life, as we see in their humorous conversation, is not a life of study or reflection. Though they speak snobbishly of the lower classes, and Mr. Kernan expresses a liking for Jesuits because they preach to the educated, these men know next to nothing about their own Church's theology and history.

When we reach the Church itself, it becomes clear that perhaps a correct grasp of doctrine and history would not make them any more aware spiritually. Joyce's tone is biting. For one thing, he names the priest Father Purdon. Purdon Street in central Dublin was the heart of the red-light district. And Father Purdon's speech seems antithetical to the spirit of Christianity. Nothing difficult is proposed, and he does not make the men listen to any of Christ's more difficult or revolutionary teachings. He goes so far as to compare Christ to an accountant.

After having spent a good deal of the story blasting Catholicism and religious life in Dublin, Joyce shifts rather abruptly in tone at the end of the story. The priest addresses the businessmen in this simple, moving passage: speaking as if he were one of them, he says, "Well, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this wrong. But, with God's grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set right my accounts" (174).

Though he is continuing with his ludicrous metaphor of Christ as an accountant of the soul, this final passage still manages to end the story with a softer tone. The effect is not to pardon the Catholic Church, but rather to refocus our attention on Mr. Kernan. We have by this point nearly forgotten why Mr. Kernan has come here; our energy, like Joyce's, has been spent enjoying the thorough ribbing the story gives to the Catholic Church. But at the end of the tale, we are reminded that Kernan has come as a man with real problems. He has been forced into this retreat by social pressure, and will probably get nothing from it. But by shifting the focus at the last minute from the Church to a single, troubled man, Joyce keeps "Grace" from turning into a diatribe. His critique of Dublin's spiritual life exists alongside a solid portrait of an individual man.

Summary:

Miss Kate Morkan and Miss Julian Morkan, spinster sisters, are throwing their annual Misses Morkan's dance. It is the holiday season. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, struggles to keep up with her many tasks, which include looking after the arriving guests. The dance is always huge: family, former music pupils, and the members of Julia's choir fill the house with gaiety and laughter.

After the death of their brother Pate, Kate and Julia have lived in the old house on Usher's Island. Mary Jane, their only niece, lived on with them. Mary Jane still lives with them, earning money through her music.

The three women are tense. It is past ten pm, and Gabriel Conroy and his wife have not yet arrived. Freddy Malins might come drunk. Finally, Gabriel and his wife arrive. As Lily helps Gabriel with his things, he notices her slim body and pretty looks. He mentions that soon she must be getting ready to get married. She retorts bitterly about the predatory nature of men, which rattles Gabriel. He tips her, and though she resists she eventually accepts. He is a stout, tall young man. He begins nervously to rehearse the speech he will give at dinner. He fears that everyone will think he is flaunting his education, and that he'll fail with them as he failed to make himself pleasant to Lily.

Aunts Julia and Kate approach him, and dote on him. He's their favorite nephew. Tonight, after the party, he and his wife Gretta will stay at a hotel rather than take a cab all the way home. Everyone makes light talk. The mood is festive and friendly.

Freddy arrives. Aunt Kate asks Gabriel to check up on him, and to look after him if he's drunk. Guests come out of the dancing room. Under Kate's direction, Julia sees to Mr. Browne, Miss Furlong, Miss Daly, and Miss Power. Mr. Browne is old. He goes with the three young ladies into the back room for some drinks. Everyone compliments Miss Daly and the waltz she played. Quadrilles (a square dance popular at the time) start, and Aunt Kate and Mary Jane try to conscript folks for the dancing.

Julia watches Freddy and Gabriel with some concern. Freddy looks quite sloshed. Freddy greets the old aunts, and then goes over to Mr. Browne to share an anecdote. Aunt Kate signals to Mr. Browne that Freddy is not to drink anymore. Mr. Browne gives Freddy some lemonade.

Later, Gabriel has trouble listening to Mary Jane's rather professional-sounding piece. He thinks about his mother, the only sister who'd had no musical talent. He remembers how his mother opposed his marriage to Gretta; but later, when his mother was dying, Gretta was the one who tended to her.

After Mary Jane's piece ends, Gabriel ends up dancing with Miss Ivors. Gabriel writes a literary column for The Daily Express, a conservative paper with Unionist leanings. The column is published under his initials. Miss Ivors figured out that Gabriel was the author, so now she teases him as they dance. The paper's politics are detestable, but Gabriel was well-paid and loved the new books he received. He does not take her teasing well. She tries to smooth things over, inviting Gabriel and his wife out to the Aran Isles for a group vacation she's putting together. Gabriel says he cannot. He has already planned a cycling trip on the continent with some friends of his. She asks why he vacations in foreign countries before he's seen more of his own land; he speaks of keeping in touch with languages. She tells him he has his own language to keep up with: Irish (Gaelic, but called Irish by the Irish to emphasize its rightful place as the national tongue). He says it's not his language. Miss Ivors continues with her difficult questions, irritating him. He's nervous about how he answers; people are listening. They continue dancing, and Miss Ivors teasingly calls him a West Briton (an Anglo-Irishman who favors Ireland remaining a colony).

After the dance, Gabriel goes to chat with Mrs. Malins' mother. He tries to banish the incident with Miss Ivors from his mind. He feels she has tried to make him look like a fool.

His wife tells him that Aunt Kate has asked if he'll carve the goose. He confirms that he will. Mrs. Conroy asks what he was talking about with Miss Ivors, and he says that she invited them to vacation west of Ireland. Mrs. Conroy is delighted by the idea, but Gabriel tells her coldly that she can go alone if she likes. Mrs. Malins keeps talking to Gabriel, but he is busy thinking about his impending speech. The incident with Miss Ivors continues to nag at him.

Mr. Browne escorts Aunt Julia to the piano. Mary Jane plays and Aunt Julia sings Arrayed for the Bridal. Her voice is beautiful, surprisingly strong. Afterward, Freddy Malins accosts Aunt Julia to tell her that he has never heard her voice so beautiful. Mr. Browne comes forward too, praising the song lightly with jokes that no one laughs at as loudly as he himself.

Aunt Kate starts talking about how Julia's voice was wasted in the Church choir. Aunt Julia worked hard hours, rising early, to sing in the Church choir. Her work came to naught when Pope Pius X issued an order banning women from church choirs. Aunt Kate goes from saying that she doesn't question the pope, who must be right (since Aunt Kate is only a stupid old woman) to saying that there's such a thing as simple gratitude and decency (which, we can infer, the pope's order set aside). Mary Jane interrupts her diplomatically, saying that everyone is quarrelsome because they've had nothing to eat.

Outside the drawing room Gabriel comes across his wife and Mary Jane trying to convince Miss Ivors to stay for dinner. Gabriel also tries to convince her, but she insists that she must go. She departs in good spirits, though Gabriel cannot help but wonder if she has left because he was so unpleasant. Aunt Kate comes in out of the supper-room, asking Gabriel to carve the goose. Gabriel gets to work with great gusto; he is a skilled carver. Folks at the table talk about the current opera company at the Theatre Royal. Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, a tenor, is among those discussing the current singers. Freddy makes some rather strange conversation (still drunk). When some of the guests disparage the current singers in favor of the singers of yesteryear, Mr. Bartell D'Arcy says that the singers now are as good as ever. It's just that all talent goes to the continent, and there are foreign singers who at least equal the Irish singers from back in the day. Mr. Browne, somewhat ridiculously, says he doubts it. Aunt Kate mentions her favorite tenor of all time, whom no one has heard of. Her memory might be skewed, but one of the men confirms the name. Still, he may have done so to make Aunt Kate feel better. They also talk about a monastery on Mount Melleray where monks allow parishioners to stay. The monks sleep in coffins, assert the guests; Mary Jane explains that it is to remind them of their mortality.

After dessert and more drinks all around, it is at last time for Gabriel's speech. It is earnest and sentimental, and brings many tears to his aunts' eyes, even though poor Aunt Kate can barely hear a word. All sing "For they are jolly gay fellows" for their beloved hostesses.

Later, the last of the guests are trying to get home. As the front door opens and closes, frigid early morning winter air comes into the house. Somehow someone brings up an old family joke about Old Johnny, the horse of Gabriel's grandfather. He begins to tell a skillfully exaggerated version of the tale to Mr. Browne. One day Gabriel's grandfather was in the center of Dublin, with his carriage hitched up to Old Johnny, and the old horse kept circling the statue of King William II. The story is interrupted by Freddy Malins coming back in from the cold, announcing he only found one cab. Freddy Malins, Mrs. Malins, and Mr. Browne take it.

Gabriel sees his wife standing near the top of the first flight of stairs, in shadows. She seems to be the symbol of something, but he cannot tell what. When Gretta comes down, she asks Mr. D'Arcy the name of the song he was singing. The song is "The Lass of Aughrim." Gabriel and Gretta eventually get out the door, along with Mr. Bartell D'Arcy and a young woman named Miss O'Callaghan, saying their goodbyes to Mary Jane and Aunt Julia and Aunt Kate. As they walk to a place where they can find a cab, Gabriel looks at his wife, who is walking up ahead of him with Mr. Bartell D'Arcy. Gabriel remembers their many happy times together, and tender feelings flood through him. In the cab, he continues to look at his wife with great feeling. When they cross O'Donnell bridge, Miss O'Callaghan repeats the saying that one can never cross the bridge without seeing a white horse. Gabriel says that instead he sees a white man, referring to a statue covered in snow. At the hotel, Gabriel pays the whole fare and sees off Miss O'Callaghan and Mr. D'Arcy.

The porter brings them to their room. The electric lights are not working, so the porter leads them by candlelight. Gabriel says to take the candle away with him; they have enough light from the windows. Gabriel is still full of amorous feelings for her, but she seems upset about something. He tries to make conversation with her, but her mind is clearly elsewhere. Finally, she breaks down and weeps. She cannot stop thinking of the "The Lass of Aughrim." A boy she once knew used to sing that song.

Gabriel is angry, but tries to hide it. He asks if she was in love with him, and she admits that they courted. Gabriel asks if that's why she was keen on accepting Miss Ivors invitation to go to Galway, so that she might see him. Gretta says that the boy is dead. His name was Michael Furey, and he worked in the gasworks, though he was delicate.

Gabriel is quite upset. While he was remembering their life together, she was comparing him in her mind to a teenage boy. Gabriel sees himself as a "ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians, and idealizing his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror" (221). He asks how the boy died, and she tells the story after getting control of herself. It was winter; she was going to leave her grandmother's and go to the convent for schooling. The boy's health was bad, and he wasn't being let out or allowed to see visitors. She wrote him a letter saying that she would be back in the summer and hoped to see him then. The rainy night before she left, she heard gravel against her window. He was there, in her garden in the cold, shivering. She told him to go home, fearful for his health, but the boy said he did not want to live. He did go back home, but a week after Gretta went to the convent the boy died. As Gretta finishes her story, she breaks down into uncontrollable sobs.

Later, Gabriel watches her sleep. He feels insignificant in her life; a man died for her love. He knows also that they have aged. The face she has now is not "the face for which Michael Furey had braved death" (223). He thinks about mortality, and his two lovely old aunts. Soon, he'll return to that house for their funerals. He feels the power of Furey's passion; he has never felt something like that for a woman. He feels the shadow of mortality on all of them. Outside, it snows. As it blankets all things without discrimination, it reminds Gabriel of mortality: "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead" (225).

Analysis

"The Dead" is the most famous story in Dubliners, and is widely recognized as one of the finest short stories in the English language. Joyce conferred on it the honor of the final position, and made it three times as long as the average Dubliners tale. His fine range, acute psychological insights, and perfect control of his art are all on display here.

Many of the main themes are touched on. We see glimpses of poverty, in the character of Lily, whose family is achingly poor. We see the political divisions in Ireland in the conversation between Miss Ivors and Gabriel. We also have criticism of the church, as Aunt Kate speaks bitterly of the decision of Pope Pius X to exclude women from all church choirs; Aunt Julia had dedicated a great deal of her life to working in the choir, and her thanks for it is the Pope's appallingly sexist decision. Aunt Kate says repeatedly that of course the Pope must be right about everything, but she cannot help but think it was ungrateful. We see in her the inability to reconcile what she knows to be wrong with the indoctrinated Catholic conviction that the Pope cannot be wrong.

Central themes are mortality and isolation. But "The Dead" is a story with much joy in it. The scene here is far from bleak; poverty has little place in this story, and many financially comfortable characters are celebrating in the midst of the holiday season. As is appropriate for this time of year, we see loving interaction between friends and family, and people of different generations.

Mortality is a key part of the story, beginning with its title. The tale is set in winter, which is both holiday season and the season of death. The two old aunts in their old house become symbols for the onslaught of time; Aunt Kate can't even hear Gabriel's speech. Gabriel knows that one day, in the not-too-distant future, he will return to the house for his aunts' funerals. And of course, there is the dead boy Gretta remembers because of a song. Much has been made of the fact that Dubliners is framed by two stories dealing with death. The two stories, in fact, could easily switch their titles. But while "The Sisters" maintains one note and holds it well, "The Dead" is a far richer tale, mixing the joy of the occasion with somber reflection and several small but significant incidents, the importance of which is recognized gradually by the reader.

Joyce's ability to write a party scene is at full strength in this tale. Most of the conversation in the story is small talk, or short moments of family drama (Aunt Kate and Julia worried about Freddy making a scene in his drunkenness, for example). There are also key moments of heartfelt emotion and connection between loved ones, such as Gabriel's moving speech, which brings his dear old aunties to tears.

But the evening is punctuated by small disturbances that linger in the reader's mind. The first is Gabriel's talk with Lily. Without meaning to, he condescends to the young girl, saying with sweetness that she'll be having her own wedding soon. Lily's response: "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (178). Her words are scathing, all the more so because we know that Gabriel did, in fact, notice the girl's physical beauty. The incident disturbs Gabriel deeply, and it is the first failure of communication in the story. What should have been pleasant became quickly unpleasant, and Gabriel begins to worry that his speech will sound too lofty to his audience's ears: "They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry" (179).

The miscommunication continues. When he chats with Miss Ivors, he takes her light chiding very personally. Irish politics come up yet again: she accuses him lightly of being less than loyal to Ireland. Although such sentiments often come from unsavory characters in Joyce's works, Miss Ivors is actually quite appealing, apparently intelligent, well-educated, and without malice. Their conversation emphasizes that an Irish party would not be Irish without reference to Irish politics: note that Gabriel looks around with concern, lest anyone should hear his opinions. At the end of the conversation, he feels that Miss Ivors has made a fool of him, but her lightness and good spirit would seem to suggest that her intentions were innocent.

But the theme of isolation and miscommunication really comes out in full force after the party. Gabriel spends the journey home thinking of his wife and their many happy moments together. But he soon learns that she has been thinking of a love she had in her girlhood. Though married, they spent the ride home in completely different worlds. Gabriel's thoughts were only his own, and he and his wife could not have been farther apart. He had hoped for a tender night, but their evening ends with Gretta sleeping and Gabriel admitting that he has never felt so strongly for a woman that he would die for her, as Michael Furey did.

The separation of death becomes a metaphor for the separation between the living. Joyce joins the themes of isolation and mortality. Gabriel feels himself becoming one of the deceased: "His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead" (224). The snow, falling upon "all the living and the dead" becomes a metaphor for isolation, the inability to know others, even those with whom we are intimate. Ironically, the snow also functions as a symbol for the death that comes indiscriminately. Opaque where it lies "thickly drifted" over objects in cities and distant graveyards, it masks all behind a shield of white, isolating each thing, while also reminding Gabriel that the same mortality awaits all beings.

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• Summary and Analysis of Ivy Day in the Committee Room
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