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Motifs In Dubliners

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Two major motifs reappearing throughout the stories in Dubliners are the Messianic and Trinity motifs. Joyce seems to have conceived Dubliners as his offering of a sacred book to the Irish Literary Movement’s attempts to spiritually arouse Ireland so that she might throw off the chains binding her to her oppressor, England. Joyce’s sacred book, however, does not flatter his countrymen by strengthening their claims to be chosen of people of the modern world and not to be made in the heroic image of the mythical-historical Cuchulain; rather, it allows them to take a good look at themselves in a “nicely polished looking-glass” so that they might see the pretentiousness of their claims. It is in great part through the two major motifs in

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