Dubliners

Mr. Duffy's only companion is himself, yet this seems to regulate his life and remove any possibility of emotional involvement. However, Mr. Duffy soon finds a companion, Mrs. Sinico, who is able to break the emotional barrier constructed by Mr. Duffy and release the pent up desires bottled for so long. Mrs. Sinico is able to slowly penetrate Duffy's exterior or, as Joyce writes, "her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic." Despite the fact that this relationship was beneficial to both characters, for Mrs. Sinico valued the meetings between them due to the fact that her husband hardly recognized her existence, Duffy was unable to continue the relationship. The sudden demise of their relationship was instigated by Duffy's internal fears of a deep and meaningful companionship that led to a feeling of vulnerability, "he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognized as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness." This excerpt illustrates the self-imposed paralysis that Mr. Duffy suffers from. His life of isolation has relegated him into a person void of emotion and incapable of meaningful human contact. The meetings with Mrs. Sinico represent the hidden desires, desires that have been quelled by years of solitude, struggling to break forth. However, years of isolation have rendered Mr. Duffy a shell fueled by habit and repetition. Even after realizing the costly errors of turning away from Mrs. Sinico, his only emotional outlet, he is unable to react to his epiphany and quietly relegates himself to a life of loneliness and solitude.
             The next example of social paralysis in Dubliners appears in the vignette "A Little Cloud," a story in which family is the paralyzing element in the characters life. Chandler is a man who leads a good and stable life with his wife and new child. Chandler holds a steady job as a clerk but longs to flee from his weary and unsatisfying profession in order to pursue his true passion; poetry.