• ISSN: 2382-6282 (Print); 2972-3108 (Online)
    • Abbreviated Title: Int. J. Lang. Lit. Linguist.
    • Frequency: Bimonthly
    • DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL
    • Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Jason Miin-Hwa Lim
    • Managing Editor:  Jennifer X. Zeng
    • Indexed by:   CNKI, Google Scholar, Crossref,
    • E-mail: ijlll_Editor@126.com
IJLLL 2017 Vol.3(4): 213-218 ISSN: 2382-6282
DOI: 10.18178/IJLLL.2017.3.4.135

Analysis of Emotional Paralysis in Dubliners in terms of Personality Structure

Xinwei Yang and Yu Sun

Abstract—Dubliners is one of James Joyce’s early works which portrays the miserable life condition of the middle and lower class people in Dublin in the early 20th century. Joyce has presented to the world in this collection a “dear dirty Dublin” which is suffused with morbid and lifeless atmosphere. “Paralysis” is the most apparent character of Dubliners. In this hopeless city, people are shackled by the doctrines and life burdens and have lost ability and passion to pursue true love. Instead, they have gradually fallen into the abyss of emotional paralysis. The present thesis will select two short stories “Eveline” and “Clay”, which depict the life of young and middle-aged Dubliners, as examples to discuss the theme of emotional paralysis in Dubliners. The Freudian theory of Personality Structure will be applied to analyze the behavior and thoughts of the two protagonists to see how the ego, id, and super-ego operate to affect their mental and physical activities, and how their emotions finally become paralyzed.

Index Terms—James Joyce, emotional paralysis, personality structure

Xinwei Yang and Yu Sun are with Northwestern Polytechnical University, China (e-mail: 1215120604@qq.com, sunyu@nwpu.edu.cn).

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Cite:Xinwei Yang and Yu Sun, "Analysis of Emotional Paralysis in Dubliners in terms of Personality Structure," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 213-218, 2017.

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