The Topic of Paralysis. Parallels between 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead' as Beginning and Ending of James Joyce's 'Dubliners'

An Investigation

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, language: English, abstract: In this essay I want to analyse and compare the two short stories 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead' from James Joyce's Dubliners, the analysis of the theme of paralysis being a second focus. The first story of the Dubliners collection, 'The Sisters', opens the Dubliners sequence and explicitly introduces the topic of paralysis, one of Joyce's major concerns and a direct criticism in view of his home town Dublin. Therefore the topic of paralysis suggests further investigation, especially concerning the content of 'The Sisters'. In this essay I will ignore the earlier version of 'The Sisters', which was printed in The Irish Homestead in 1904, to avoid confusion and to concentrate on Joyce's revised version, which was published in 1914 as the beginning of the Dubliners collection. Moreover the revised Dubliners version is better suited to be discussed in my essay, because of the fact that I want to take the general concept of paralysis within the whole collection of Dubliners into consideration. Nevertheless I will not take into account the contents of the other short stories from Dubliners, because I want to concentrate on the comparison between 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead', in order to avoid digressions and to keep my main focus in mind. 'The Dead' I chose for investigation, because several parallels to 'The Sisters' and similarities concerning the contents suggest to understand 'The Dead' as a final coda or summary to the Dubliners collection. Another reason for my choice of the two stories is founded on personal considerations: if I compiled a collection of short stories, I would put the best story at the ending as a climax and finale, and the second best at the beginning to arouse the reader's interest and curiosity. I assume that Joyce pursued a similar strategy. First I want to give a brief overview of common understandings and analysis of the central aspects and main characters of the two short stories, followed by an interpretation of the first and the last story of Dubliners as beginning and ending of a cycle. Next I want to show some more conspicuous parallels between 'The Sisters' and 'The Dead', especially referring to the topic of paralysis. On the one hand I investigate paralysis as a theme within the short stories and as a characteristic of the storys' main characters, and on the other as Joyce's criticism towards his home town Dublin.