2022 World Lit. _Yubeen Kim's Blog

Title: <The Boarding House> Author: James Joyce  Rating: 7.5 / 10  In <The Boarding House>, 'marriage' was portrayed quite differently with other classic stories we are used to. Polly and Mr. Doran seems that they will gonna marry, but it does not seem that they are really in love. Mr. Doran worries about his social reputation rather than the relationship between Polly. Polly also was in despair after her mother found out what happened between her and Mr. Doran. I think this unique depiction of marriage means that our real life is not like a romance movie. Reality is complicated. Marriage is not a thing that can be only decided by love.  Mrs. Mooney is a interesting character. She is a strong woman who raised her own business and two children by herself. However, she used Polly to gather more men to her boarding house, and she kinda used Polly to get a good son-in-law. She is very cunning but that was the way she survived from harsh situation. I think this sho...

Title: <Eveline> Author: James Joyce  Rating: 7 / 10 The story shows the miserable life of Irish woman. Even though the author was a man, he well depicted the difficulty of living in Ireland as a woman, and the woman's view on Irish society at the time. I think Eveline's choice was a good decision. Even though she is having hard time in Ireland, it will be hard to settle in a totally new place, too. She has no acquaintance in Buenos Ayres except Frank. Also, Frank is a kind guy to her now, but Frank may turn mean after arriving at Buenos Ayres, just like her father have changed after her mother's death. However, I didn't feel that Eveline's choice was really self-directed. She was paralyzed like a helpless animal at the crossroad even though it was her hope to escape from home. The reason of her choice is not clearly shown in the story, but if her choice was entirely self-directed, she would not be paralyzed. She would have been confident instead. Her choice ...

Title: <Araby> Author: James Joyce  Rating: 7.5 / 10 By implying that the Catholic religion made the boy confuse about his feeling, the author criticized Catholic in the story. However, even if the boy didn't get influence from Catholic, he would probably still had confusion about his feeling of love towards Mangan's sister. Kid's definition of love and adult's definition of love is different, and adolescent is in the middle of kid and adult. Thus, it is not a strange thing to have confusion about oneself's feeling when someone is in first love, especially in puberty. So, it can be true that paralysis of strict Catholic added the boy's confusion, but we cannot blame that it's Catholic's 'fault'.  Also, before epiphany, it is written that "we played till our bodies glowed", and after epiphany, it is written that "gazing up into the darkness". When we compare these two sentences, we can see that the author portrayed the in...