Abstract:
The central points in this paper are the desires of people and the realisation of life as they are portrayed in James Joyce's stories. The chosen stories from James Joyce's collection, Dubliners, will serve as examples of how desire leads towards self-realisation. The consequences of the First World War, the rapid development of modern technology, the Renaissance, industrialisation, and urbanisation, caused people to experience psychological and emotional challenges as they were socially paralysed. Joyce’s writings were written in the style of experimentation; therefore, inner consciousness was a common subject in the stories of Dubliners. That leads to the incorporation of the narration called stream of consciousness. Stream of consciousness pays more attention to human thought. As a modernist novelist, James Joyce has formed new perspectives laying a strong foundation for experimental narrative and manifesting pertinent social realms. His success lies in his openness in writing and Joyce inspires readers to look at life realistically. Through Dubliners, Joyce has tried to expose the reader to various types of desire in the lives related to Irish people. He has keenly observed the depiction of desire in the lives of Dubliners and the connection between their desire and stream of consciousness. Further, his stories encourage the reader to generalise the fact of being strong in the inner self. He emphasises that stream of consciousness leads to self-realisation. Most of his stories have discoursed the element of desire which leads to the death of desire as self-realisation sets in. The main objective of this paper is to discuss how desire is depicted and its pace of self-realisation through the selected stories of Dubliners by James Joyce.
