Discussion Forum - Unit 8 PDF

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A little cloud was written by James Joyce, published in his famous short stories' collection Dubliners – reflected Irish middle-class life around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century. This story tells of the meeting in Dublin between two old friends – Gallaher and Chandler. Gallaher left the city eight years ago, moved to London, and made a name for himself as a journalist; he lives an interesting life, travels abroad to see and explore countries and cultures in different parts of the world. Meanwhile, Chandler gave up his aspiration of being a poet, he now works in a law office, gets married, and lives an average life in Dublin. The meeting made Chandler feel jealous of Galleher’s success and how boring, and empty his life is. Returning home, Chandler started to think about his dream, tried to read poetry but being interrupted because of his crying little son which jolted him back to reality; “and tears of remorse started to his eyes” (Joyce, n.d., last paragraph). I enjoyed reading this story because it shows the fact that not every dream comes true, we sometimes must give up our dream because of family ties, social obligations, or our personal limitations. Moreover, this story reminds me of an old fable about a dog with a juicy bone on the way heading home; he sees his reflection in the water and thinks that is another dog with a bigger bone. He starts to bark, tries to take the bone, and in the end, the bone falls out of his mouth, and he goes home with nothing. It’s normal human behavior: we always want more than we have and keep comparing ourselves to others, however, it always can cause us to regret what we aren’t instead of being ourselves. Joyce, J. (n.d.). A little cloud. ESL-Bits. http://eslbits.net/ESL.English.Listening.Short.Stories/A.Little.Cloud/index.html...