2.4 Public life The final stories of the collection, consisting of “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” “A Mother” and “Grace” each depict a condition of Irish society – politics, culture and religion. They view the drabness of Irish society. “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” displays Joyce’s attitude towards politics, with the main character of having autobiographical features and indirectly representing Joyce’s loss of political ideals. He views the characters in these stories to only have one desire to fulfil their most basic need, which is money. 2.5 Themes Dubliners embodies themes such as identity and paralysis, as well as interaction between life and death. The characters in Dubliners are either physically or mentally paralyzed. They …show more content…
The connection between these two stories present a unity. While the beginning story presents a sculptor who exiles himself from his native Ireland, “The Way Back” is concerned with a painter who returns to it. Both stories are about an artist's attempt to deal with Irish material itself. “In the Clay" depicts not only criticism of the Irish Church but more importantly, views John Rodney being sympathically criticized in the sense that he is pathetic due to his lack of feeling. It shows Rodney’s fight for freedom not only of the national and churchy underdevelopment but also of his own efforts to free himself from this very underdevelopment. One major feature of The Untilled Field is dreams. The wish fulfillment begins in the mind, but when attempted to become concrete, the ideas are being abandoned. This feature is specifically present in the stories 'Home Sickness', 'So On He Fares', and 'The Wedding-Gown". These dream sequences demonstrate desires of the characters that do not concur with reality. In “Home Sickness”, Moore attempted to portray as accurately as possible his desire to restore Irish intellectual life since it has become