Dubliners — Style and Substance
A story does many things for us. It makes us feel deeply; joy, sorrow, fear, anger. It draws us in to fantastical worlds that make the one we live in more colorful. It entertains us with plots full of twists and turns and characters that feel real. We have the tremendous good fortune to live in a world overflowing with stories at our very fingertips. Televisions, bookshelves, computers, and smartphones are all great libraries of narrative. In this vast breadth of quantity, our great challenge lies in discerning quality. A decent story can entertain us with a compelling plot and fashionable prose. But a great story, a quality work of literature, transcends plot devices and reminds us of our shared human experience. It holds up a clouded mirror so that, if we look intently and precisely, we can see through the pages and catch a glimpse of ourselves.
Dubliners is one such great story. It is a story of Dublin, Ireland in early 1900s, and of the people who lived their lives in her streets, ports, and pubs. The book, written by a young James Joyce in 1905, presents its story in a series of fifteen vignettes, each comprising its own world of character, drama, and conflict. There is no overarching plot to these short-stories, and even the mood and tone vary from one to the next. But across all these plotlines, there emerges one recurring character: the city of Dublin. A host of memorable inhabitants — which include a race car driver, an Irish nationalist, and an alcoholic law clerk to name a few — come together to create a rough portrait of their city. Their triumphs, fears, suffering, and aspirations are a reflection of Dublin itself.
Though Joyce’s city and characters feel alive and authentic, his storylines can sometimes seem mundane. A husband and wife travel home from a dinner party; two boys skip school and spend the day at the market; a mother fusses over the details of her daughter’s piano concert. These aren’t the scenes that inspire Hollywood blockbusters. On the surface, they seem even dull, pointless. After all, we are conditioned to judge a story primarily by the originality and dynamism of its plot. But while plot is important, it’s not everything. Because the moment you open the pages of Dubliners, you are pulled into a rich, living world. The thrill and excitement comes not from watching what these characters do, but rather from understanding who they are. The simplicity of the book’s scenes creates space. Space to appreciate the importance of a single thought, an offhand comment, a subtle gesture. Space for the reader to pull up a chair and settle in with the characters — in a stuffy apartment, a crowded pub, or a cold dark street. And when we settle in with them, we rejoice with them, laugh with them, suffer with them. Each of these fifteen stories thus become exercises in empathy.
Joyce invokes this empathy by inviting us to observe his characters, always through an understanding and compassionate lens. When a lonely, aging man paces through the night and sees a young and happy couple, his thoughts turn to his own lost love. In nine gut-wrenching words, Joyce shows us the man’s longing, regret, and despair; “he felt that he had been outcast from life’s feast.” In another chapter, an aspiring writer, jealous of his friend’s critical success and bachelor lifestyle, begins having dreams of grandeur for himself. But when the writer returns home to an annoyed wife and wailing child, his aspirations come crashing down to earth. Again, nine words present to us the character’s deep frustration and longing; “It was useless, useless! He was a prisoner for life.” Most of the short stories in Dubliners follow the same pattern as the two I’ve just mentioned. Joyce begins by introducing us to his protagonist, most often an ordinary and embarrassingly relatable subject. He then crafts a vignette, weaving the two parallel narratives of the current scene and the characters’ backstory simultaneously. Finally, his characters face a moment of truth when their conflict and pain are either resolved or exposed. Each of these inner journeys is a profound adventure.
The emotion, adventure, and insight of Dubliners are the book’s defining characteristics. But it’s worthwhile to look one layer deeper and understand the writing itself, and how Joyce constructs the reader’s experience. To appreciate style as well as substance. Make no mistake — anyone can enjoy Dubliners without any familiarity with the art of writing. But for those of us who are interested in the craft, this book is a treasure trove. Joyce puts on a clinic. Employing a full range of literary devices, often many at the same time, he paints a portrait of his city. Metaphor, alliteration, simile, and rhyme work together to engage the reader in an experience. To get a taste, consider the following iconic line: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Passages like this demonstrate the elusive balance between clarity, flow, and prose that pervades the book.
For a century, writers and critics have detailed and debated the quality and significance of Dubliners. It is a classic of the English language that revolutionized fiction. I have little to add to all the wealth of scholarship and praise this book has earned, other than my own personal reflections and experience as a reader. Dubliners will always hold a place on my mental shelf, in a catalogue alongside the other books, albums, and films that I consider to be the most profound and timeless. This book goes deeper than the hundreds of other decent, entertaining stories that we consume. It does something most stories don’t. Dubliners turns the mundane into the sublime. In doing so, it exposes to us the human condition in all its tragedy, irony, and grace.
