A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland. Each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society. The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the essence of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims. Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories - The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby are similar to each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the character of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the character captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that " a young lad should run about and play with young lads of his own age - suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. The boy feels the need to get away from him, but this proves to be impossible. When the boy ran away into his "pleasant and vicious region-, the priest was still there "haunting him.
