Dublin is the preeminent cultural center of Ireland. Famous sons of the city include James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde, and Samuel Beckett. The works of Joyce are considered the autobiography of an age, namely the early 1900s in Dublin. His collection of stories Dubliners presents a portrait of life in the city. Lives intertwine and interconnect against the background of the city.
Dubliners deals with ordinary everyday events, but the emotions of the characters are far from ordinary and mundane. The stories are linked by the theme of the disastrous effects of routine, something we can all relate to. One of the stories, An Encounter, begins rather conventionally – a boy skips school, a routine that bores him, and finds himself in an even worse place - a field, where he has to listen to a psychotic man recycle disturbing thoughts. In the story Counterparts the protagonist is a copy clerk. His job mirrors his life, a tedious routine. He takes out his frustration in bars and on his son. His anger deepens and he cannot find peace. His life is a downward spiral.
Many of the stories treat the subject of death. The collection opens with The Sisters, which discusses the ways that death affects the living. It closes with The Dead, where the protagonist Gabrial insults three women at an Epiphany party and later finds that people like him, who cannot feel anything, are dead already. At the end of the story (and the collection) the snow is described as covering the dead and the living.
Joyce is the national poet of Ireland, famed for his accurate portrayals of life in Dublin.
Other cultural centers in the city include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Chester Beatty Library, the National Print Museum of Ireland, and the National Gallery of Ireland.
Despite Joyce’s depressing portrayal of Dublin, this city is among the most youthful in the world – around half the population is under 30 years of age.
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