James Joyce

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“In 1941, suffering from a perforated ulcer, Joyce dies in Zurich on January thirteenth” (Encarta, 1).
“Joyce’s story, “Clay”, starts off on Halloween, which is the Celtic New Year’s Eve and Feast of the Dead. In Irish customs, it is a night of remembrance of the dead ancestors and anticipation of the various fortune telling games” (Masterplots, 1). The story is about Maria, a middle age spinster who works in the kitchen of a laundry established for the reform of prostitutes. She makes her way across the city of Dublin to the seasonal festivities at the home of her former father figure, Joe Donnelly. Joyce draws a character portrait, which conveys much of Maria’s past, present, and future. The story develops at three scenes: at the laundry, on the journey across the city, and at the Halloween party. At the laundry, Maria’s fussy personality is shown as she prepares tea and anticipates her reunion with Joe and ...

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these traditions, Ireland’s subsequent conquest by the English, and the inertia that Joyce observed in the Dublin of his time are all recurring themes in Joyce’s fiction. In this particular case, he is able to exploit the rich fictional possibilities afforded a Halloween story about a poor, disappointed spinster whose profile is like Ireland’s battered western coastline” (Masterplots, 3).
Eveline is a story of a woman that has to make a decision. It’s probably the hardest decision of her life. She must decide whether to keep her family together or to go start a new family with Frank in Buenos Ayres. She lives with her father. Her older brother Ernest ...

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