James Joyce - short stories - 1914 - p. 203, 204    

This collection of short stories provide a varied representation of contemporaneous aspects of middle-class life in Ireland’s capital, progressing from youthful narrators to older ones and primarily using free indirect discourse as a narrative mode. The episodes deal with issues including death, love, schooling, Catholicism, rejection, family, national identity, alcoholism, aging, and art; many of them feature epiphanic moments at which some truth becomes clear to a character.

The writing style is widely viewed as an instance of naturalism. Several of the characters from Dubliners reappear in Joyce’s later work Ulysses.

Key elements: alcoholism, art, Europe, father figures, marriage