Junyoung Ro World Lit Journal

  A Mother, By James Joyce (1914) Rating: 8/10 Mrs. Kearney felt like a Gangnam Mother in our society. She takes too much care of her daughter. This is the way that can stop her daughter's future. Now and then, people don't like interference from a person's family. The person doesn't have any feelings, but because of her family, she may be on the black-list from the committee.  In my experience, I also don't have good attention to whom are like mama boys. They grew up as well as to communicate with us, but their parents think that they are still young to give their opinion. This is the reason why this story is best related to me and easy to understand. I also felt that mothers who are like that were still there a hundred years ago. 

  Clay, By James Joyce (1914) Rating: 7.5/10 The most interesting part of this story was where Maria sings at the end. She is an old lady, and she is very deteriorated. So she sings the same part once more. No one points out her mistake, and Joe fell into tears. I think this is because of the theme of death. Maria is too old so Joe is worried about her death. And this situation, singing the same verse one more time, makes Joe feel that Maria is getting older. This seems similar to The Dead 's ending where Gabriel feels sad. His aunt Julia may be in the same situation as Maria.  The title clay means an early death. At first, I couldn't understand why clay was the symbol of early death. However, after hearing about the Halloween Game and the background in Dublin, clay is quite dark and hard to catch so it's like an uneventful early death which Maria is in.  The plot was kind of a hero's journey for Joe, which understood more about Maria. This is the another reason why I l...

  Two Gallants, By James Joyce (1914) Rating: 7/10 I want to talk about the title, "Two Gallants". A gallant means a man who is polite and kind towards women, especially when in public. It's an irony in this story. The two main characters, Corley and Lenehan, don't act as gallant. They are just 20C dubliners who are paralyzed in women. In this part, I think James Joyce made this title in an irony. Also, the gold coin may be a symbol. In this story, Corley got the gold coin from a woman. I thought this is quite different from modern society. In modern society, usually, women get money from men, but in 1904 Dublin, men get money from women. This part was interesting and shocking to me, and I think Joyce wanted to tell the readers that this is not right. The reason I rated this story 7 is that it was fun and interesting but it didn't come to me well. The interesting part was that there were parts where paralysis appeared a lot, and these parts were good to me because...