The Duality of Ireland

James Joyce's Dubliners depicts a city that is greately influenced by the Church and its leaders but struggles with morality.  The stories span from a young boy who struggles with his ending relationship with a local priest, that is alluded to being a pedophile, to an older man who attends a funeral to discover he didn't know his wife as well as he thought.  Joyce shows how these people in Ireland live and how they keep themselves living.   Joyce writes his stories in a stream of consciousness style and does not simply state exactly what the characters are experiencing, yet leaves the reader to abstract it.

Joyce depicts Ireland as a city held strongly by The Church's beliefs, yet the characters embrace hedonism.  The Irish identity is binary, holding two conflicting ideas.  In "An Encounter" two young schoolboys are captivated with the Wild West, which shows how the Irish people embrace American culture.  The kids encounter an old man who, on one hand, talks about finding girls to fancy and, on the other, discourages it.  This odler alcoholic is alluded to being a pedophile as well.  The old man says, "Every boy has a little sweetheart," then he switches his viewpoint, "If ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him." This man is obviously a drunken Catholic or Protestant who holds on to his values while still embracing hedonism.

In "A Little Cloud," Little Chandler is jealous and displeased morally of his friend Ignatius Gallaher because he has gone to Britain and is making a good sum of money.  Little Chandler, on the other hand, is finding refuge in his personal cloud of poetry.  As well as his family, Ireland is holding him back.  His dreams are only a part of his cloud, which is representative of Ireland holding onto its sense of identity in the face of other European nation's success.  The city of Ireland is existing on an island yet still struggling to be free of the influences of England.