cc licensed flickr photo shared by Aislinn Ritchie found by searching on "Dublin child" I am reading Dubliners in eForm, using Stanza on my iPhone, and read on my flight to Austin today the first three stories. So the first obvious "doh" is that on their own, they are not neat start to end stories, they feel more like snapshots, postcards, or just peeking in a musty window of these people's lives. In all three the narrator is a child, and we never know their name. Interestingly, both the tellers in "The Sisters" and "Araby" are children living with aunts/uncles. In Araby there is a connection as the house the child lives in was previously occupied by a priest who recently dies, I am guessing it is Father Flynn from "The Sisters"-- hinting at some more of these loose overlaps in the rest of the stories? Maybe that open ending, where the story is not wrapped up in a neat bow, says something about this time and place? In "The Sisters" we can only guess about Father Flynn's late stages of life, seen as going downhill and embarrassing in the sisters eyes, but not so much in the boy's perspective. Or the priests late plans for one more trip to the country. In Araby, this description of North Richmond Street stuck out to me-- the street being "blind" (in more ways than one?)
The other houses of the street, conscious of the decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturable faces
Methinks that is a bit metaphorical?I'm just making wild guesses and reactions here, a total Joyce noob. Tell me more about these first stories. cogdog
