James Joyce’s take on British colonialism is clear from his works: only Britain benefits, no matter how they try to spin the invasions. For this course, we read from Ulysses, but his short story anthology Dubliners is a perfect example of his literature taking on colonialism.
In Dubliners, Joyce writes about average people of Dublin and their lives. Throughout the stories is a common theme of the effect that the British have over the Irish because Ireland is a colony. It shapes the self-identity of the Dubliners, as well as their careers and personal relationships. The first strong glimpse of this is in a story called Araby in which a young boy goes to a bazarre to buy a gift for his crush. There is a heavy focus on how much many he starts with, how much he spends, and how much he is left with at the end. Along with this description of amount, each coin is described in detail and it is very obviously British money. In addition, the people who run the bazarre, and who are standoffish and rude to the young boy, are British as well. By the end, the boy describes himself as a monster and you can see the way these effects of colonialism even affect the identity of such young children in this way.
According to a handout on Postcolonialism from the University of Wisconsin, three characteristics of Postcolonialism are resistant descriptions, appropriation of the colonizers’ language, and re-working colonial artforms. These are all present in Dubliners, sometimes very subtly and sometimes quite overt. Joyce is well known for his ability to hide a puzzle in his words, a form of appropriating British English. Anyone who studies him knows to have a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary nearby because a word that seems out of place in its usage is probably a pun or hidden message, once looked up. He is a master of British English and uses it to slyly criticize them in the process.
Works Cited
Harrison, Sarah. “What Is Postcolonial Literature?” Wisconsin, 2012.
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Edited by Margot Norris, W.W. Norton, 2006.
ENG 3230 