James Joyce himself wrote, "I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that . . . paralysis which many consider a city." Joyce believed passionately that Irish society and culture had been frozen in place for centuries by two forces: the Roman Catholic Church and England. The result, at the turn of the twentieth century, was one of the poorest, least-developed countries in all of Western Europe. And so images of paralysis recur throughout the collection obsessively, relentlessly, and without mercy. In the first line of "Sisters," and thus the first of Dubliners as a whole, it is revealed that Father Flynn has suffered a third and fatal stroke. Later, the unnamed protagonist of the story dreams of a gray face that "had died of paralysis," which is that of Father Flynn himself. This sets the tone for much of the material to follow.
The main character of "An Encounter" wants "real adventures," but is waylaid on his quest for the Pigeon House by a stranger who masturbates — a kind of paralysis because it is sex that does not result in procreation or even love. The Pigeon House itself is symbolic: A pigeon is a bird trained always to return home, no matter how far it flies. In "Araby," although the boy ultimately reaches the bazaar, he arrives too late to buy Mangan's sister a decent gift there. Why? Because his uncle, who holds the money that will make the excursion possible, has been out drinking. Drunkenness paralyzes too, of course. Eveline, in the story that bears her name, freezes at the gangplank leading to the ship that would take her away from her dead-end Dublin life. All three characters venture tentatively outward, only to be forced by fear or circumstance — by Ireland itself, Joyce would say — to return where they came from, literally or metaphorically empty handed. Indeed, characters in Dubliners are forever returning home, bereft: Think of the protagonists of "A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," and "Clay." The bereft Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead" never makes it home at all.
