James is all alone and I need something happy to read.

With the first two short stories of Joyce I had a lot of trouble not just in relating to the characters of Joyce's "Araby" and "Eveline" but it was near impossible for me to comprehend what I was reading. I found the notes far from helpful and more distracting and interuptive to the stories. I still have no idea what I read and I'm pretty sure I read it while I was sober and awake. I could be wrong though.

When I started reading "A Painful Case" I decided to ignore the notes and just read the story and do my best to understand what was taking place. It must have made a huge difference because I finally began to somewhat enjoy Joyce's work. "The Dead" was interesting too but I mostly want to talk about Mr. James Duffy. This guy was so terribly alone and I found it heart breaking. For a seemingly financially stable man he really was one of the poorest creatures we've read about this semester. I say poor in the sense that he was a man of routine and nothing else. He had very little emotion and I'm pretty sure he kept himself alienated from even his family, unless there was a holiday or someone died. I was thrilled to see him develop a relationship with Emily, even if they had inappropriately gotten down he would have finally connected to someone. Let me make one thing clear, I am not an advocate for infidelity! But I do think if you have absolutely no emotion please by all means do something to make yourself more human.

Emily and James' connection reminded me of ScarJo and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation. They had a completely sexless affair and managed to connect in a foreign setting where the feeling of isolation was what essentially brought them together. I feel that Emily and James were also victims of isolation but they were strangers in their natural habitats. Joyce goes into great detail describing the setting and layout of James' home. I found it interesting that the first two pages of this story describes James' home and illustrating his reading habits then moves on to his facial descriptions and then in just one line states that "He had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed." Aaah, so depressing!

When Emily is introduced I didn't even care that she threw in the fact that she was married and obviously had children, I just wanted this lonely man to connect with something living. Of course they go about their new friendship in a sketchy manner by being secretive and hanging out in really bizarre places so that in itself foreshadowed the horribly "painful" death of Emily in the end. I was left feeling really distraught with the ending of this because when James realizes that he is alone and Emily is gone I feel that he too died and what little bit of humanity she brought to him was gone.

If anyone can recommend some ridiculously light and HAPPY reading for me to engulf myself in over Christmas please by all means send me some suggestions. Four literature classes and absolutely no happy books can certainly do some damage to a reader.