Dubliners infographics

Dubliners | Summary and Famous Quotes

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”

About James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

James Joyce was born in the island of Ireland. He was an Irish Novelist, poet, short story writer, teacher, and literary critic. He had provided a significant contribution to the modernist Avant-grade and has secured a place of one of the most influential and essential authors of the 20th Century. His writings contain simpler tales with conventional techniques of language.

Dubliners Summary

Dubliner has a fixed plot; instead, it is the collection of short stories. Ireland is the thread which ties them together. The first three stories are about childhood. “Araby” story entails the love story of a boy who had a crush on his neighboring girl.  In “an encounter,” the adventure-obsessed author and his friends skip the school to experience freedom. A young woman named Eveline lived with her father after her mother’s death in the Eveline story. In “The Sisters” story, a young boy learns about death through the end of a priest. A young boy named Jimmy compared himself with his wealthy friends in “Counterparts.”

Several short stories of Dubliners, namely, are as follows.

  • The Sisters-
  • An Encounter-
  • Araby-
  • Eveline-
  • Two Gallants-
  • The Boarding House-
  • A Little Cloud-
  • After the Race
  • Counterparts
  • Clay
  • A painful case
  • Ivy Day in the Committee Room
  • A Mother
  • Grace
  • The Dead

Genre: Realist Fiction | Urban Literature

Setting: Dublin, Early 1900

Publication Year: 1914

Primary Conflict:  Various Figures struggle with the challenges of complicated relationships and life in Dublin.

Main Themes Dubliners

  1. The Prison of Routine.
  2. The Desire for Escape
  3. The Intersection of Life and Death

Central Motifs in the Novel

  1. Paralysis
  2. Epiphany
  3. Betrayal
  4. Religion

Dubliners Famous Quotes

“Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

“A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

“He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music.”

“They lived and laughed and loved and left.”

“All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday.”

“Your battles inspired me – not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.”