CHARACTERS IN LITERATURE

Characters in Literature

Characters in Literature

Thesis Statement

In this report we focus of different author's James Joyce & Flannery OConner about the biographical perspective of there writing styles and ther writing style reflect their self experience.

James Joyce - The Boarding House

James Joyce was born in Dublin as the son of John Stanislaus Joyce, impoverished gentleman, who had failed in a distillery business and tried all kinds of professions, including politics and tax collecting. (Joyce, Fasano 2008) Many years ago I got into an argument with a drunken professor over James Joyce. My contention was that no scholars had ever looked into the role that Joyce's syphilis had in the breakdown of his narrative abilities. Most have taken for granted that all of the dashing of Joyce's style from Dubliners, his first published fiction, through Finnegans Wake, his last, was by choice.

The next story is The Boarding House. Mrs. Mooney owns the house, and has had a hard life. Now, though, it consists of vicarity- mostly off her boarders' lives. Her daughter, Polly, at nineteen, is sleeping with a boarder- Mr. Doran, in his mid thirties. Mrs. Mooney aims to confront him over marrying her daughter. He is conflicted over his affair with Polly. Polly wails to him that her mother knows all, and wants to see him. As he heads downstairs he leaves Polly and encounters her hotheaded brother. A bit later, Mrs. Mooney calls her daughter downstairs, for Mr. Doran wants to speak to her. (Seidel 2002)

All three of Joyce's principal characters in this story are motivated by the basest instincts for survival. Mrs. Mooney needs to rent out rooms to itinerant men, even though this -- together with her cold and calculating nature -- places her beyond the pale of polite society. Polly needs to find a husband, both to take her place in the adult world and to quash the rumors about her rampant hormones. (Joyce, Fasano 2008)And once Mr. Doran's affair with Polly is revealed, Mr. Doran needs to marry the girl in order to preserve his own reputation and livelihood. Even though this story ends with the prospect of marriage, it is not a happy solution, for all three characters are trapped inside the narrow boxes of Dublin society, the same thing happened with him in his oen life.

James Joyce - The Dead

The last story in the book is the most famous, and at forty-eight pages is considered by some a novella, although it clearly has truck with the rest of the stories in the collection. The Dead is arguably Joyce's finest extended piece of prose writing. There is a holiday party, and two sisters, Kate and Julia Morkan, and their niece Mary Jane live on an old house on Usher's Island. Gabriel Conroy, the spinsters' nephew, and newspaper columnist, and his wife, Gretta, arrive, and Gabriel is taken with Lily, (Seidel 2002) a servant girl. Freddy Malins, a drunk, is cut off from liquor. Gabriel is tasked over his conservative political opinions by a Miss ...