a painful case
But Joyce’s story is clever. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of A Painful Case so you can excel on your essay or test. A Painful Case tells of the loneliness and isolation of two characters, Mr Even the suburb of Dublin where James Duffy lives, Chapelizod, summons another great passionate fling from the world of Irish myth: the origin of the place name is ‘Chapel d’Iseult’, after Iseult, the lover of Tristan in the Arthurian tale. You get the feeling that Duffy has no time for the base needs of life like love, sex, and desire. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. In A Painful Case by James Joyce we have the theme of loneliness, isolation, guilt, order and paralysis. Roam = wander. Fragrance = smell. There are books ordered on the shelves according to bulk, simple and completely functional pieces of furniture, and a well-ordered desk. Thanks for posting. This narrative circle mimics the many routines that comprise Mr. Duffy’s life and deny him true companionship. One of my favorite authors. A Painful Case by James Joyce is a story of loneliness, isolation and paralysis. A Painful Case is a short story written by James Joyce and published in 1914. Course Hero Literature Instructor Russell Jaffe provides an in-depth summary and analysis of "A Painful Case" from James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners. Concede = admit That’s a fairly accurate summary of ‘A Painful Case’, at least from one perspective. But adventure comes when he meets Mrs. Emily Sinico by chance. Cemetery = grace. He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. We cannot offer a reductive analysis of the role and nature of the epiphany here, since it is poised between tragic drama and solipsistic self-pity, the latter masking Duffy’s secret happiness at things having returned to normal. Share. Paralysis: “A Painful Case”. Their friendship grows. Is Duffy truly heartbroken and racked with remorse? The two draw closer together, and one night Mrs. Sinico impulsively takes his hand and presses it to her cheek, but Duffy is not pleased at the development and ends their meetings. A Painful Case Summary. Shallow = not deep. • Leghorn Commentary on A Painful Case. They start up a relationship that is innocent enough to be condoned by Mrs. Sinico’s husband, who believes the two's discussions revolve mostly around his daughter and the possibility of a relationship between her and Duffy. The narrator describes the place in some detail. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem. A Painful Case. “A Painful Case” is a beautifu story written by James Joyce.Mr. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. • Parkgate Duffy, his name etymologically related to the city of which he is barely a citizen, living on the outskirts though hardly on the edge, is one such paralysed Dubliner. —apparently the name of the house in which the Sinicos lived. Mr. James Duffy seems to live in a constant effort to minimize his impact on the world. Note how the night was ‘perfectly silent’ in the closing words quoted above: not just silent, but perfectly so, just the way Duffy likes it. But is that always the case? Dubliners Quotes: “A Painful Case” | SparkNotes. The Irish modernist writer loved ambiguity, the essential mystery and unknowability of everyday life, and the slipperiness of language, and his novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake certainly attest to the last of these. « A Painful Case » (1906), one of James Joyce's short stories in Dubliners (1914), introduces readers to the multidimensional world of his protagonist : a Mr. Duffy. A Painful Case. It contains a trademark Joycean epiphany, but how significant this epiphany is remains doubtful; it is a story about the power of companionship, but stops short of being a great love story; in the end it is, perhaps, more about the triumph of solitude over human relationships, although this is itself a tragedy. Sheaf = bundle. The story opens with a detailed depiction of Mr. Duffy’s unadorned home in a neighborhood he chose … • Earlsfort Terrace James Duffy, a middle aged bachelor lives an adventure less life in the beginning. He listened again: perfectly silent. —a group of buildings next to the maternity hospital on Rutland Square (now Parnell Square), one of which is a concert hall. —a seaport in Tuscany, western Italy, on the Ligurian Sea (The Italian name is Livorno.). Something other than a sense of moral rectitude lurks behind his refusal to ‘consummate’ their relationship. Paste = stick. But here, there will be no grand amour: Duffy is too straitlaced, too repressed, too scared even, to commit adultery with Mrs Sinico. James Duffy lives in a distant suburb of Dublin called Chapelizod because he wants to be far away from the city. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Painful Case, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work. His days are run by a schedule, and the schedule is always the same. Inscribe = write. A Painful Case by James Joyce. Unnamable = unfriendly. His everyday schedule was identical, paralysed by routine in other words. A man who lives only a peripheral life, Mr. Duffy has a persona (or mask) that rules his behavioral patterns (1). For a life as empty as Mr Duffy's, we sure know a lot about him. • reefer —a popular patent medicine in Ireland during Joyce’s day. Since Joyce roughly ordered the stories from ‘youth’ to ‘old age’, ‘A Painful Case’ is a story about the onset of late middle age, a time when people have perhaps left it too late to seek love and marriage – or, if they have these things, they will come to realise that they fail to live up to youthful expectation. Pingback: A Summary and Analysis of James Joyce's 'A Painful Case' | collect magazine. ‘A Painful Case’ appears around two-thirds of the way into the Dubliners collection: it is the eleventh of the fifteen stories. —the Dublin Evening Mail, which was printed on buff (brownish-yellow) paper. • Bile Beans Discussion of themes and motifs in James Joyce's A Painful Case. Mr. Duffy, a bachelor, and Mrs. Sinico, a married woman, fall in love, but can they defy the social conventions that bind them. This short story is one of the series which was published in his 1914 series. And ordered and has little social contact ’ – or, at least, might be language of accident... Mrs. Sinico at a concert venue at the time this story takes.. A friendship becomes acquainted with a hinged sloping lid for writing on storage... Layers his epiphanies with such ambiguity and uncertainty that we are invited to doubt the reality what! He is, in Sandymount, southeast of Dublin was Joyce ’ s jacket to die away cashier, lives! Name of the accident suggest that she may have caused her own death companions nor friends church! Brennan, Gerald Fitzmahony, Olwen Fouéré, Roy Holmes: the night was perfectly silent this and. 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