Author James Joyce incorporates modernist writing style and point of view into his short stories, The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby. In Dubliners, he tells the story of the lives of the people of Dublin. Focusing on the stages of life from childhood to youth and then adulthood. The first section of the book Dubliners by James Joyce revolves around childhood and how, regardless of age, all children experience feelings of disillusionment, alienation and entrapment in their lives. These stories illustrate modernist themes of alienation through the character's feelings. The narrators slowly begin to realize that everyone has their own perspective on life, no one will ever one hundred percent understand your specific experiences like you do. Children experience and see life differently than adults, a common theme in modernist literature. Kids can only see the world through what they know, which isn't much considering they are quite young. Overall, Dubliners shows childhood as a condition of not fully understanding the world around them. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay In The Sisters, the young narrator highlights the disconnect between individual perception and reality. When his friend and religious mentor, Father Flynn, suddenly dies and he is given the chance to see his body, he cannot comprehend the situation and instead goes for a walk: “I wanted to go in and look at it but I didn't have the courage to knock” (Joyce). He finds that, despite everything he once knew was changing right in front of him, the rest of the world remains unchanged, commenting, "I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed to be in a mournful mood and even felt annoyed in discovering in myself a feeling of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death” (Joyce). Although this is strictly childish, it illustrates modernist themes of alienation through the way the character feels narrator is slowly starting to realize that everyone has their own perspective on life, no one will ever one hundred percent understand your specific experiences like you The story is told to us through the innocent and prejudiced mind of the young boy, but slowly we see more of reality when we listen to Father Flynn's Old Cotter and the Sisters, An Encounter, describes a young man's exasperating experience with an unusual older person. The narrator feels trapped in the boring daily practice of school and needs to encounter an experience like the one in the Wild West stories he reads. She regrets her desperation, saying, “when the restrictive influence of school was far away, I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape that only those chronicles of disorder seemed to offer me… I wanted real adventures to happen to me. But real adventures, I reflected, don't happen to those who stay at home: they must be sought abroad” (Joyce). This leads him and a friend to make friends and travel around Dublin, even though they are still students with little experience of the outside world. While the young people hope to experience a cheerful and carefree reenactment of the Wild West, in reality they are rather accosted by a peculiar and frightening older person. Overall, An Encounter demonstrates how the desire for a break from the ordinary routine can really be painful as it puts the dreams in a distant light. The young people casually look back on their experience in Dublin without thinking about the results. This illustrates the modernist themes of the relationship between perspective and reality.