Dubliners The stories were writen when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging, at a crosroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce`s idea of an epiphany: a moment where a character experiences self-understanding or ilumination. Many of the characters in Dubliners later apear in minor roles in Joyce`s novel Ulyses. The initial stories in the colection are narated by child protagonists, and as the stories continue, they deal with the lives and concerns of progresively older people. This is in line with Joyce`s tripartite division of the colection into childhod, adolescence and maturity. The Sisters There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had pased the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would se the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent andsinful being. It filed me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to lok upon its deadly work. Old Coter was siting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to super. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his: "No, I wouldn`t say he was exactly… but there was something quer… there was something uncany about him. I`l tel you my opinion…. " He began to puf at his pipe, no doubt aranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fol! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms, but I son grew tired of him and his endles stories about the distilery.