A Desire To Escape Dreary Dublin :: Essays Papers

A Desire To Escape Dreary Dublin In James Joyce’s literary works, Dubliners he attempts to depict Ireland and the city of Dublin and the people living there in the early nineteen hundreds. His purpose in writing this book is to depict the people of Ireland in this time and show the troubles they faced. In the stories, â€Å"The Boarding House,† â€Å"A Little Cloud† and, â€Å"The Dead,† characters are dealing with similar problems: a need to escape their life’s responsibilities. The characters desire to be free by means of escape. In â€Å"The Boarding House,† Doran desires to remain free and escape any type of responsibility involving marriage. In â€Å"A Little Cloud,† Little Chandler is struggling with being a husband and a father and the responsibility that coincides with it. Finally, in â€Å"The Dead,† Gretta wishes to escape through thoughts to a past love, who is now is deceased. It is evident in all three stories that there are themes of responsibil ity and escape. The characters in the three stories share the same desire: freedom through escape of their life responsibilities. In the story â€Å"The Boarding House,† the theme of desire to escape is clearly seen. Bob is involved with a teenager Polly, daughter of the Mooney family. Bob Doran is very reluctant to accept any type of responsibility involved with a relationship with Polly, especially the idea of marriage. â€Å"Once you are married you are done for† (61). Doran wants to escape the problems in life that he has gotten himself into. He contemplates the responsibilities that would be in his hands if he were agree to marriage, he has also thought about what others may think of this. â€Å"His instinct urged him to remain free, not to marry† (61). When the time comes for Bob to discuss his future plans about marriage with Mrs. Mooney, he desires nothing more than to escape his own life: â€Å"He longed to ascend through the roof and to another country where he would never hear again of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by step† (63). In the â€Å"Boarding House,† the theme of responsibility is also very prevalent. Although Bob is very unsure of everything he still feels he needs to be responsible and keep his word. Bob is aware that he is partly responsible for the relationship that has been taking place with Polly. He weighs and measures the positives and negatives of going through with marriage.