Traumas of Irish history can be identified through the areas of home, church, and politics. Each area represents the traumatic memories such as the absence of father, the failure of priesthood, and the vain reproduction of hero myth respectively. In the Irish home the presence of "the man upstairs" suppresses the desire to overcome the trauma of the absence of father. Priests do not keep faith in sacred life, not living other than secular ones, and they themselves remain a trauma in the Irish mind. In the area of politics nationalist desire for independence tends to deteriorate into "inflated" hero myth. When they recall the traumatic memories, Dubliners get the desire to be satisfied in vain, with the result that the desire always gets frustrated with the demand of reality. It leads to them wandering through the metonymy of frustrated desires with no purpose as Mr. Farrell, the lunatic, does. |