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One night around Christmas time, Gabriel Conroy, a youngish writer with gilt-framed round glasses, goes with his wife Gretta to the Christmas dance held at the home of the Misses Morkan: his aunts, Kate and Julia, and their niece, Mary Jane. A cheerful chaos reigns at the old women's house, with Lily, the caretaker's daughter, scampering about, and Gabriel's aunts worrying whether Freddy Malins will turn up drunk. A piano plays in a parlor full …

…chaos becomes discernible. The dance, the loud, foolish exchanges in the carriage, the dinner and the cheering after Gabriel's speech, come to life here as scenes rarely come to life in fiction. In this sense, the genius of James Joyce in Dubliners is that he can show us the tragedy of the unknowability of anyone outside oneself while simultaneously giving us as complete a view as is possible into the essential character of human beings.