A Study Of Symbolism In James Joyce’s Dubliners

James Joyce is one of the greatest Irish novelists in the twentieth century. And he is also one of the representative writers in modern literary creations. Dubliners is his first and the only collection of short stories, which is not only notable, but also considered as an experimental work in the writing of Joyce’s modern novels. There are fifteen stories in it, based on the background of Dublin, vividly representing the low and middle-class people’s lives in Dublin in the early twentieth century, revealing the numb and paralyzed state of Irish social life under the double oppression of the British Empire and Catholicism.In this collection, Joyce’s writing is exquisite and profound. From the perspective of literary theories, Joyce adopts many artistic techniques in order to make it more absorbing. Especially symbolism makes the motif and the themes link tightly in it. The thesis will make an analysis of symbolism in Dubliners to better interpret its motif of paralysis.The thesis is written from the perspective of symbolism in Dubliners. It is made up of six parts: an introduction, four parts of the main body and a conclusion. The first chapter gives a general introduction on Dubliners, its writing background, the previous studies abroad and in China, as well as symbol, symbolism, the function of symbolism and the layout of the thesis. The main body contains four chapters from the second chapter to the fifth chapter. The second chapter expounds on symbolism in the structure of Dubliners, compared the work to a symphony to play the melody of paralysis, further reveal and deepen the motif of paralysis. The third, the fourth and the fifth chapters focus on and dig out symbolic elements in the text in Dubliners about the titles, the settings, female and male characters. The last chapter makes a conclusion for the thesis. The application of symbolism in Dubliners can better demonstrate the motif of paralysis, understand the original intention of Joyce’s writing, as well as point out deficiencies of the thesis and put forward some advice about future studies.