Language
The language of the short story “The Boarding House” by James Joyce is complex, yet not difficult to understand. The author occasionally employs some long descriptive phrases along with stream of consciousness (the thought flow of the characters) which may seem harder to follow because of free indirect speech:
All his long years of service gone for nothing! All his industry and diligence thrown away! As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of course; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of God to his companions in public-houses.
The above fragment, for instance, represents Mr Doran’s thoughts although they are rendered in the third person and are nor marked by quotation signs.
The choice of words is meant to illustrate the social setting and the atmosphere of Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century.
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We also encourage you to pay attention to some of the figures of speech employed by the author:
- Imagery
- Similes
- Rhetorical questions
- Repetition
- Symbols
Imagery
Imagery can be defined as the overall images a narrative text creates through descriptive passages. This images can include visual, but also other types of details related to senses. In the story, Joyce creates imagery in connection to the setting and the characters. Here are two relevant examples:
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Symbols
A few symbols further contribute to the text’s stylistic qualities and help to enhance its themes.
Firstly, James Joyce uses colour symbolism to indicate decay as many of the items he mentions in the text are related to brown and yellow: “yellow streaks of eggs (p. 3, l.2)”, “butter safe under lock and key” (p. 3, l.6), “beer or stout” (p. 1, l.25), “bacon-fat” (p. 3, l. 2).
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