Searching For Independence In Dubliners :: Essays Papers

Searching For Independence In Dubliners James Joyce is the author of Dubliners, a compilation of Irish short stories that reflect on the feelings he associates with the city of Dublin, where he grew up in a large impoverished family. After he graduated from the University College, Dublin, Joyce went to live abroad in Paris, France. This action indicates a sense of entrapment that led to his desire to escape. The situations in his stories differ significantly, but each character within these stories experiences this sense of escape that Joyce had. In â€Å"An Encounter†, two boys make their first real move at being independent by skipping school to explore Dublin. In â€Å"Eveline†, the main character has a choice between taking care of her unstable father or leaving him to lead a new life with a man she has been seeing. In Joyce’s story, â€Å"The Dead,† a young man is thrown into deep human assessment, becomes unsure of who he is, and soon after is frightened of this newly discovered truth. The stories in Dubliners implicate this need for independence through characters in different situations and experiencing the feeling of entrapment. â€Å"An Encounter,† takes a unique approach in describing the need for escape through the viewpoint of a young boy. The story is written in first-person giving the reader an advantage in knowing the thoughts of the narrator. The narrator and his friend, Mahony, desire independence from their ordinary lives at home. They have read several stories about the Wild West that cause them to think about exploring the world outside of the one they already know. An incident that happens in school triggers the boys to finally make plans to skip school to go explore downtown Dublin. This is the major independent action taken on the part of the main characters and another boy, Leo Dillon. Obviously, school has become predictable and playing in the backyard is no longer satisfactory. The narrator describes school as a, â€Å"restraining influence,† and he, â€Å"began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder (storybooks about the west) alone seemed to offer me† (12). Parts of the story begin to demonstrate how the journey the boys have embarked on have awakened their senses. In the middle of the story, Mahony states it would be fun to board one of the large boats along the river, and set off to lands that they had only heard about in school.