A Little Cloud: Disillusionment and Dublin's Paralysis

A Little Cloud: Story Summary

One evening, a fussy, conservative Dublin clerk known as Little Chandler sets out to meet his old friend Gallaher at a restaurant called Corless's. Gallaher left Dublin eight years earlier and has made a success of himself as a journalist in London. On the way, Little Chandler fantasizes about succeeding himself, as a writer of poetry. At the restaurant, Gallaher tells Little Chandler about his adventures abroad; afterward, Little Chandler returns home to his wife (Annie) and baby daughter, where he fantasizes further about success as a poet, loses his temper with the child, and then feels remorseful.

A Little Cloud: Literary Commentary

Thematic Echoes in Dubliners

This story reiterates the dynamic of several other Dubliners tales, including An Encounter, Araby, and Eveline, as Little Chandler sets out seeking Gallaher and all he represents, only to return home defeated. It also resembles After the Race in that Little Chandler quests like Jimmy for European sophistication and winds up as provincial as ever. At the same time, parallels exist between Little Chandler/Gallaher and Lenehan/Corley from Two Gallants. The first member of each set is so misguided that he admires and hopes to emulate the second—though Gallaher, like Corley, is spiritually dead.

Escape vs. Salvation: Gallaher's Superficial Success

A new twist, not seen in other Dubliners tales, is the notion that escape from Ireland does not necessarily equal salvation. "If you wanted to succeed you had to get away," Little Chandler thinks, echoing the thoughts of the narrator in An Encounter ("real adventures . . . do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad"). And yet Gallaher, who got away, has succeeded in only the most superficial sense. Despite having seen London and Paris and heard talk of Berlin, he is shallow, boorish, and alone. A Little Cloud is a turning point in the collection because it implies that, contrary to what so many of the book’s characters believe, flight from Ireland is not necessarily the solution to their problems. This was hinted at in After the Race (in which, after all, Jimmy has “studied” abroad), but it is truly dramatized here, in the insufferable, obnoxious figure of Gallaher.

Narrative Coherence and Foreshadowing

Finally, the conclusion of A Little Cloud, in which Little Chandler returns dissatisfied to his family and shouts at his crying child, will be brutally reiterated in the ending of the next story, Counterparts. This binds the two stories together, just as The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby are bound by their interchangeable protagonists. Again, Joyce conceived Dubliners as an integral work of fiction, not merely a collection of stories. Techniques such as these lend the volume coherence.