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Dubliners by James Joyce is a collection of short stories that revolve around the everyday lives of men, women and children in the Irish capital of Dublin. The short stories are generally unhappy tales that form a chronicle of lost innocence, missed opportunities, and paralysis which is always depicted as moral and physical paralysis. Joyce said that in Dubliners his intention was "to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I …

…character. Everyone suffers some sort of paralysis in Dublin, and everything combines to give a very unpleasant atmosphere in Dublin. There is an acute sense of darkness that suggests total confusion, which is why the citizens of Dublin are prevented from seeing reality in every single one of the stories. The characters in all the stories are isolated from each other and from their families, and even more dangerously, from a strong sense of themselves.