"Dubliners is build around narratives of eviction where people increasingly become distant from the certainty seemingly offered by their daily lives."

Consider defeat, powerlessness, stasis, Imprisonment, and paralysis as the major reasons for disenfranchisement. These five themes are closely connected. The colonization of Ireland is paralleled by the sense of defeat and powerlessness in the lives of individuals. In many stories, characters are so trapped by their conditions that struggling seems pointless. In "Counterparts," for example, Farrington is allowed one moment of triumph when he publicly humiliates his tyrannical boss. But for that one moment, Farrington is made to grovel in private, and he knows afterward that his life at work will become even more unpleasant.

Joyce conveys this powerlessness through stasis. In Dublin, not much moves. At times the paralysis is literal: note Father Flynn in "The Sisters." At other times, the stasis is a state of life, as with the frustrated Little Chandler of "A Little Cloud." This feeling of stasis is closely connected to a feeling that Dublin is a kind of prison.

Many characters feel trapped. We begin with a paralyzed priest in "The Sisters," followed by frustrated schoolboys trapped by Dublin's tedium in "An Encounter," followed by a boy without the means to indulge his fantasies in "Araby," followed by a young woman crushed by the stifling conditions that entrap her at home in "Eveline" . . . most of the characters are is some way imprisoned. The entrapment is often caused by a combination of circumstances: poverty, social pressure, family situation. Sometimes, the imprisonment comes from the guile of another character, as with the hapless Mr. Doran in "The Boarding House."

The frustration caused by this stasis, impotence, and imprisonment has a horrible effect on the human spirit. Often, the weak in Dubliners deal with their frustration by bullying the still weaker. Mahony of "An Encounter" picks on small children and animals, Little Chandler and Farrington, in two back-to-back stories, take out their frustrations on their children.