Paralysis and Epiphany in Dubliners

1896 Words8 Pages
Paralysis and Epiphany in Dubliners This essay focuses on the reoccurring theme of Paralysis that is one of the central motifs in James Joyce’s Dubliners. The characters in the book live their ordinary, uninteresting and bleak lives until met with an experience that leaves them shocked and paralyzed, often in more than one way. This essay starts with a bit of historical background that sets the atmosphere for the events described in the novel and continues to discuss examples of paralysis and their meaning. The main reason for this theme is the sheer brilliance of Joyce and his style, as well as the fascination caused by the dim, rainy atmosphere and the little fetishistic obsession with detail that Joyce loved so dearly. The book was first published in the summer of 1914. By then, Ireland has underwent tremendous perils and hardships that have all inevitably carved into the mentality of Irelanders. The country was being constantly whipped by its union with Great Britain, the people were still horrified by the numerous famines of the 19th century, and there were religious disputes over the differences between the Catholics and Protestants. Ireland was being torn apart by the political, religious and human pressure – again, after being through the same process during the Viking raids in the 8th century, the Norman Invasion in the 12th Century and the Tudor conquest of Ireland in 1540’s. This may be seen as one of many cycles that the Irishmen went through, the constant fight for freedom from under the yoke of non-Irish rule and the disasters that inevitably come in life. Dubliners take place at the beginning of the 20th Century. The Dublin that is described in the book is bleak, gloomy, lacking any hope of changing the ways the country is being governed (which is subsequently often talked about quite a lot during the novel), any chance of escaping the endless knot
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