Dubliners Blog Post 1 Jebediah Pritchard

James Joyce writes in a very certain style, with a specific articulated method. The short stories that were covered for the week share a theme. That theme, is a theme that is pervasive in Joyce's Dubliners . That overarching theme that pervades the short stories is one of death and how death is dealt with. One may rightly wonder in reading the first stories as to why I would speak of them all as absorbed in the cloth of death. Perhaps it it more of doom, and the foreboding that certain events in life, events common to us all, having in fact in them each a dark hue. In " The Sisters", a priest does in fact die, in the most literal way, it is not a unique event in the stories, however. In "An Encounter " Joyce and his mate end up meeting an old man who is rather odd, and who puts the boys somewhat ill at ease. In reading the excerpt many conclusions can be drawn and to what the exact relationship between Joyce and the old man is, the view could be taken that the old man represents a sort of undeadness, yes the man breathes, though he is antiquated, as some odd carnival show that is broken in every way, though some how still lives on, en viced in the endless ever repeating stories(as they appear to be to Joyce), this I believe portends to death as well.
One may wonder how "Araby" can be about death, or some similar construct, and it is , though a romantic death occurs. A slow, painful sorrow comes over Joyce as the events of the bazaar evening do not go according to plan, nor in fact, the real fact, the events do not go to heart. A death all to familiar .
Jebediah Pritchard