INGLESE
JAMES JOYCE
The "Dublineers" was wrote by Joyce between 1904 and 1907 and it’s a collection of short stories talking about Dublin and its inhabitants’ lifes. This book was published for the first time in 1906, but some pieces were censured by the editor. Since then, Joyce fought to reach his’ goal, to succeed in publishing Dublineers in its complete version; but only after nine years and three different editors, the book was published fully. The problem was that the editors were scandalized by some profane passages, by the fact that Joyce used real names and places and that he talked about religious and political facts. Joyce aim in writing Dublineers was to write down a moral history chapter of his country and he chose Dublin because he saw in that city the centre of paralysis. He wanted to present these stories under four aspects: the childhood, the adolescence, the maturity and the public life; the stories are settled down in this succession order, following this plan:
Childhood : The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby
Adolescence : Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, The Boarding House
Maturity : A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, A painfull case
Public life : Ivy Day in the committed room, A mother, Grace
Conclusion : The Dead
The Childhood stories are written in the first person (a child is talking) and these tales allow us to see Irland moral paralysis throught a child outlook. The Adolescence stories talk about the frustration in the adolescent age and in the first maturity period. Follow the tales on the complete mature men and the public life. The final story, The Dead, summarizes the principal themes of the work and it’s a kind of conclusion. The most evident unity in Dublineers is the ambiental community: infact all these stories talk about life in Dublin during the period of transition between two centuries and they represent the moral story of this city, writes down by Joyce. Considered all togheter, they present Dublin like a spiritual, political and social centre of paralysis. Joyce defines Dublin paralysis trought the contrast with an imaginary city, based on spiritual and political activity: behind the stories city, Joyce draws, like a mirage, the shadow of the old Dublin, the grat Dublin of the past period and, maybe, the possible Dublin in the future. In his desire to create "epiphanies", Joyce gives up with the direct comment, to use a more allusive method, in which the dialogues and the ambientations express author’s opinions. It’s possible to see all these themes in the last tale of Dublineers, The Dead, which works like a kind of summary of the entire work. The protagonist is Gabriel Conroy; in the first pages of the story he and his wife Gretta, come from a cold and frosty night in Dublin into the warm of Miss
Morkan’s birthday party. Here the snow represents - against the house warm - cold, isolation, inhumanity. But, in the middle of the narration, it becomes in Gabriel’s mind a symbol of renouncement, escape, pleasant anonymity. Gradually Joyce prepares us to the complex symbolism of the last part of the tale. Gabriel is unsure, he is afraid that his speech will be a total failure and he is sure that the fault is in his education and in his superior values. He is afraid to be not understood. Gabriel follows the dinner, the conversation and the "musical moment" with detachment and , at the end of the party, he wants to leave as soon as possible. During the party he lived lots of different situations that reveal his unsureness and his egotism; the theme of mutation and time had been indroduced by the speech on the deaths’ world. Now all these themes will be melted togheter in the last part, to show them how different aspects of an unique theme. When Gretta tells Gabriel her old love for Micheal Furey, who lost his life for her, Gabriel becomes conscious that the love for his wife was only an illusion, it was only love for himself. Joyce here gives to Gabriel a new sense of auto-consciousness. This consciousness is seen like an experience of a intelligent and sensible man, conscious for the first time in his life of the paralysis of the world; now Gabriel is in communion with everybody, living and death. Joyce symbolized this transformation with the snow image: at first the snow was the symbol of isolation and the lackness of human union; later it becomes the symbol of a transient escape in the oblivion; finally, in the latest pages of the story, the snow is transformed in a complex symbol of the new Gabriel’s consciousness, that removes the mind to herself and look forward the whole humanity. So the sense of alienation and of paralysis presents in Dublineers is surmounted with a new sense of adaptation to human condition, sense which finishes with the love for the whole humanity, past, present and future.
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