James Joyce's life and its reflection in Dubliners

¶ … James Joyce's life to that of his work "Dubliners"

Comparison of the Life of James Joyce and His Work "Dubliners"

Dubliners

James Joyce's work "Dubliners" deals with many different stories of various everyday people that live in Dublin around 1904. Much of Joyce's work is difficult to read and therefore many people avoid what he writes, but this particular book is very easy to read and very enjoyable. It is easy to understand the book, and the stories of the people are often quite fascinating. Most of the stories deal with hope to some degree, and the point of many of the stories is to showcase many of the different ways that the Dublin people in the stories deal with what they are given and the chances that they have, as well as the changes that they undergo through the course of their stories.

Even though the idea of hope is very important to the stories in Dubliners, this does not mean that the book is full of happy endings. On the contrary, there are very few happy endings in the book. Instead, there are only the stories that Joyce tells, what happens to the people in them, the choices that they make, and what kinds of consequences that these individuals experience based on the choices that they make. Many of the people in the stories do not think of the future or even really realize that it is ahead of them. Instead, they seem to realize only the past, and they spend a lot of time dealing with the ghosts of their pasts.

There are two kinds of stories in Dubliners - those that are intimate and really involve the readers with the characters, and those that are detached and show the reader as being more of just a casual observer. Both of the story types are fascinating, but not everyone will like the stories because of the different feelings that they often invoke in the readers. However, the main purpose of this paper is not to discuss the book specifically, but instead to discuss how it relates to the actual life that James Joyce lived. There are two important quotations from the book that will also be included for a better understanding of the issues that Joyce dealt with throughout his life. The concept of hope that was presented in the book will also be used to tie into Joyce's life, since it is a concept that has a lot of meaning.

There was no hope for him this time," (Joyce, 1) begins one of the stories in Dubliners. This is significant, because Joyce often felt that he had no hope, and that the human race in general had no hope. This was a rather depressing way to think of things, but it was still the opinion shared by many during the time that Joyce lived. Joyce's stories are filled with these kinds of concerns and fears, and another quotation in that same story says that:

drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me (Joyce, 2).

By looking at this quotation, it is easy to see that the person in this story was plagued with fears and worries that he did not seem to be able to shake. Such was the nature of Joyce's life, as well.

James Joyce's Life

James Joyce was born in Rathgar, Dublin, Ireland, on February 2nd, 1882. He died in January of 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland. Throughout the later years of his life, Joyce has to deal with schizophrenia in his daughter, a breakdown that took place in both the career and marriage of his son, many various health problems, and many battles and worries that had much to do with the books that he had written or was trying to write (James, n.d.). Because of all of these issues, it is easy to see how Joyce would have believed that there was no hope for him or others, and how he could always feel like there were terrible things lurking in the shadows, despite the happy thoughts that he would try to think. It is difficult to remain positive or optimistic when everything is falling down around one.

Joyce was also a very superstitious man, and believed that books should be completed or published on certain days (such as his birthday) or there would be terrible consequences. However, much of this came simply from Joyce's own paranoia and had little to do with any logical reasoning on his part. The writing of Dubliners took James Joyce nine years, and he stated that he wanted to show the people of Ireland themselves (Hart, 1969). However, since many of the stories were not happy but instead were depressing or painful, the people of Ireland were not necessarily receptive and did not want to see themselves in what Joyce had to show them. Whether he was really showcasing them, or instead showcasing himself to a higher degree, is something that could be argued but not actually proven one way or another, since Joyce maintained that the ideas behind the stories were not related to him.

Another important concern for those that study Joyce and attempt to understand his life based on the stories that he writes is that he used a series of epiphanies in many of his books and stories (Valente, 1995; Ellmann, 1965). He wants the reader to understand the issues that he faced, and the issues that others face as well as they go through their lives. Joyce's life appeared to be a series of epiphanies mixed with a series of despairing moments, and this came through in his writing as well. Even though he insists that the stories in Dubliners are about people in Dublin, the way that the stories are written and arranged also tells the reader much about Joyce himself, since the readers are more able to understand what Joyce feels and thinks by analyzing the stories he creates and the way that they are written (Walzl, 1965).

The Book and The Man

In Dubliners, Joyce talks primarily of childhood, adolescence, and family life, and this is somewhat ironic, since Joyce apparently was not happy with his overall. One is left wondering if Joyce writes about these issues as a way to explore his own feelings and problems with the issues that he had growing up, or whether he instead chooses to write about them simply because he is fascinated with the people of Dublin. There are some critics that indicate that Joyce may have written Dubliners to basically be mean-spirited to the Dublin people, but there are a couple of reasons that he might have done that.

The first reason is that he may have honestly held some mean-spirited beliefs about his fellow Dubliners, and therefore he wanted to make sure that they saw themselves in an unfavorable light just as he did. If this were the case, it is quite possible that he wanted to hurt these people and make them feel poorly, but it is unlikely that he succeeded to any great degree. Even if he did write the book with the idea of being relatively cruel to those that lived in Dublin at the time, it is more likely that he merely wanted to show that the city itself seemed to be stagnate and unpleasant. This stagnation of the city could have reflected what Joyce actually saw, or it could have reflected only what Joyce felt inside, and therefore thought that he saw in the city.

The second reason that Joyce may have been seen as cruel or mean-spirited in what he wrote is that he had those feelings of pain and upset about his own childhood and later life, and therefore this came across in his writing. It appears that this is the most logical reason for the critics' beliefs that Joyce was being deliberately cruel with what he wrote in Dubliners, but no one will ever know for sure. It is true, however, that especially in his later life, Joyce was not a happy man and had many problems with his own well-being and that of those that he cared for. His family troubled him, his health troubled him, and his writing troubled him. It appears, also, that these concerns of Joyce's were not restricted to his later life, but were only more obvious during that time, and therefore he carried these problems with him from the time that he was very young. This could be what led him to, even unintentionally, represent the people of Dublin the way that he did in his writing.