An Intimate Verging on Claustrophobia: the Language of Dubliners
Kafka wrote that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us,” and Joyce brilliantly depicts the exploration of inner emotions and conflicts through each character in the fifteen stories in Dubliners. In turn, the reader inevitably contemplates their inner emotions too. Araby and Eveline are two of the stories that are not necessarily connected, yet they share similar recurrent themes of isolation and the strong desire to escape. David Lodge suggests that Joyce was one of the 20th century avant garde novelists who believed that they could get closer to reality not by "telling" but by "showing" how it is experienced - subjectively. To do so, he utilizes techniques such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue and free indirect speech. Araby explores the story of an unnamed young boy who seeks to escape the suppression of spirit his monotonous life has caused. The young boy’s only beacon of light in a dreary house in Dublin is his infatuation with his friend’s sister. He attempts to escape his paralyzing reality with the dreams of her, “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance” (27). It is critical to note that most of the events in the story take place in the boy’s mind. Joyce employs interior monologue where he uses first person point of view to reveal the boy’s inner thoughts and feelings concerning his situation. David Lodge describes the effect this technique