Can't resist making one last point about Dubliners lest there be any doubt that James Joyce could write beautifully. These are the last words in the book from The Dead.
Quote:
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A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
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This paragraph, at face value, is lovely. But if you like games such as anagrams and puzzles there is enough here to keep you happy for a while. Westward = toward the setting sun = death. The echoes are lovely, too: falling softly...softly falling, falling faintly...faintly falling (and the soft sibilance of "soul swooned slowly"
). Joyce intimates tenderness, even compassion, here missing in the earlier stark, often brutal, stories. I haven't quite worked out all the snow, but it's Christmas Day and there are cheerier things to think about.