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Dubliners By James Joyce 's Dubliners

Decent Essays

In James Joyce’s Dubliners, the reader experiences the different lives of Dublin’s inhabitants. Each Dubliner has different problems, fears, hopes, and dreams, which allows culminates into many different perspectives. Joyce masterfully writes the daily lives of these people without any romanticism. The Dubliners stories are a small snippet into their full lives, while the reader does not get the full story, he does not need to. Not much may seem to happen in the stories, but profound themes and messages are hidden beneath the words. In the story An Encounter, a group of boys imagine they are in the Wild West, while staging mock battles of cowboys vs. Indians. The story includes many encounters that present themselves as ordinary; however this is far from true. In fact, the story is largely commentating on often mocking Irish religious life and escapism. In the beginning of the story one of the boys, Leo Dillon, is scolded by Father Butler for reading The Half Penny Marvel. Father Butler considers the comic as nonsense and tells Leo that his Roman History is far more cultured and important (Joyce 12). A religious figure like Father Butler is common among Joyce’s works, as he has always shown contempt for religion. In a sense, Father Butler creates structure for the boys, but it is monotonous and rigid. Clearly Father Butler does not approve of Leo’s fascinations for the Wild West so he condemns him. The lack of support for imagination or freedom is snuffed out by a

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