Dubliner’s Paralysis Underlined

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English - Literature, Works, University of Basel (Englisch), language: English, abstract: In James Joyce’s Dubliners, four stages in life are dealt with in 15 short stories: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The two short stories this paper will examine are An Encounter and Araby , both of which take place in the stage of childhood. The main protagonists are on the verge of becoming adults. In these two stories, as well as in real life, adolescence is about getting to know oneself, love, and sexuality. Comparing the two stories in regard to sexuality and love it soon comes clear that they deal with very different natures of those concepts. In this paper, these different kinds will be compared; differences and similarities will be shown. The way in which the notions of sexuality, love and adolescence are negotiated in An Encounter and Araby underlines the notion of paralysis.