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In
Typical objects also bolster the palpable realism of the stories in the collection. When Joyce describes a character sipping a drink or munching on food, as he does with Lenehan in “Two Gallants,” the character becomes real and accessible because of the specific meal he eats and is no longer a distant, abstract figure on the page. Lenehan eats not just dinner, but a dinner of peas and ginger beer. While many of the objects might be unfamiliar to modern or non-Irish readers, they nevertheless create an authenticity that encourages the reader to observe characters closely. Joyce makes the reader privy to all aspects of his characters’ lives: both the uneventful necessities and the lofty thoughts, and the connection between the two.
With the first-person narration of “The Sisters,” Joyce immediately pulls the reader into the collection. The intimate storytelling of this and the following two stories creates a sense of shared experience: the narrator speaks to the reader as a fellow Dubliner. The transition to the third person in “Eveline” does not necessarily create a detached feeling, but with the rest of the collection the reader becomes a voyeur, watching the ebb and flow of Dublin life as Joyce does. At the same time, Joyce manages to include the same sort of intimacy of the first-person narration in the third-person narration. When he describes a scene, he allows the prose to mimic the thoughts of the protagonist. Being a Dubliner, Joyce suggests, is feeling like both a part of a community as well as an outsider to it. In turn, the narrative arc of the collection, starting with “The Sisters” and ending with “The Dead,” invites the reader into Dublin as someone who feels the snow connecting his or her life to others, like Gabriel does, for example, but in remote and cold ways.
The two forms of narration in
Joyce chooses titles that often seem unrelated at the beginnings of stories but deeply symbolic by their conclusions. As such, he requires his readers to make interpretations. With the title of “Two Gallants,” for example, the reader expects a story about two gentlemen, but gradually realizes that the protagonists are nothing of the sort. The irony of the title underscores the fact that the story implicitly critiques the lives of Lenehan and Corley, and also suggests the false images that people assign to themselves. Lenehan and Corley probably think themselves to be two gallants, but Joyce shows them to be otherwise. Joyce’s choice of titles also serves to create dialogue between the stories. The titles of the opening and closing stories of the collection, for example, could be interchangeable. “The Sisters” fits the content of that story, but it could also appropriately describe the final story, which also involves two aged siblings. Likewise, “The Dead” could serve as the title for the first story, which begins with the anticipation of a death.
Such connections generate a sense of unity in the collection,
as well as a circle. By creating titles that intermingle thematically
with each other as “The Sisters” and “The Dead” do, Joyce constructs
a narrative loop that recalls the circular routines of the lives
portrayed in the stories. As such, the title for the collection
is significant. These stories depict as well as
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