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Essay / James Joyce's Incorporation of Modernism in His Short Stories
Author James Joyce incorporates the modernist writing style and point of view in his short stories, The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby. In Dubliners, he recounts the life of the inhabitants of Dublin. Focus on the stages of life from childhood to youth to adulthood. The first section of the book Dubliners by James Joyce revolves around childhood and how, regardless of their age, all children experience feelings of disillusionment, alienation and entrapment in their lives. These stories illustrate modernist themes of alienation through what the character feels. The narrators slowly begin to realize that everyone has their own outlook on life and that no one will ever one hundred percent understand your specific experiences as well as you do. Children live and view life differently than adults, a common theme in modernist literature. Boys can only see the world through what they know, which isn't much considering they're so young. Overall, Dubliners present childhood as a condition in which they do not fully understand the world around them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayIn The Sisters, the young narrator highlights the gap between individual perception and reality. When his friend and religious mentor, Father Flynn, dies suddenly and he is given the choice to view his body, he is at a loss to understand the situation and goes on a walk: “I wanted to go in and look at it. but I didn't have the courage to knock” (Joyce). He finds that despite everything he once knew was changing just before him, the rest of the world is unaffected, commenting: "I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed to discover in myself a sensation of freedom, as if I had been freed from something by his death” (Joyce). Although this is strictly childish, it illustrates modernist themes of alienation through what the character feels. Now the narrator slowly begins to realize that everyone has their own perspective on life, no one will ever one hundred percent understand your specific experiences as well as you do. The story is told to us through the biased and innocent minds of the young boys, but we slowly see reality when we hear from old Cotter and Father Flynn's sisters. An Encounter, describes a young man's maddening experience with an unusual elderly person. The narrator feels stuck in the boring daily routine of school and needed an experience like the Wild West stories he reads through. He mourns his despair, saying: "When the restrictive influence of school was removed, I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for escape which these chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me... I wanted real adventures happen to me. myself. But real adventures, I thought, do not happen to those who stay at home: they must be sought abroad” (Joyce). This leads him and a friend to play truant and travel around Dublin, despite the fact that they are still students with little experience of the outside world. While the young men hope to experience a happy and light-hearted reenactment of the Wild West, in reality they are instead drawn to a strange and frightening old person. Overall, An Encounter demonstrates how the desire to break away from ordinary routine can actually be hurtful because it puts dreams in a distant light. The young men recklessly embark on their experience in Dublin without thinking about the results. This illustrates.