Dubliner’s Paralysis Underlined

In James Joyce’s Dubliners, four stages in life are dealt with in 15 short stories: childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life. The two short stories this paper will examine are “An Encounter” and “Araby”, both of which take place in the stage of childhood. The main protagonists are on the verge of becoming adults. In these two stories, as well as in real life, adolescence is about getting to know oneself, love, and sexuality. Comparing the two stories in regard to sexuality and love it soon comes clear that they deal with very different natures of those concepts. In this paper, these different kinds will be compared; differences and similarities will be shown. The way in which the notions of sexuality, love and adolescence are negotiated in “An Encounter” and “Araby” underlines the notion of paralysis.