The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby
             Dubliners, a collection of shorts stories, by James Joyce, is centered around the everyday lives of ordinary people in Dublin, Ireland. According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [be] the center of paralysis" (439). Each of the fifteen stories are accounts of disappointment, darkness, captivity, and frustration. The book is divided into four parts: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories reveal Joyce's feelings that Dublin is the personification of paralysis and the citizens are victims. Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate portrayal, they all have similarities with each other. The first three stories, The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity is order to prove !
             that the childhood stories can be seen as a specific section of Dubliners. I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the central character of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three stories uses religion to keep the narrator captive.
             In, The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "...a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age..." (10) suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy cannot free himself from the presence of Father Glynn as is shown in the next passage: "But the grey face stil...