James Joyce's collection of fifteen short stories portrays the lives of Dublin's middle class during the turn of the twentieth century. Structured from childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and death, each story shows people paralyzed by the mundaneness of everyday life. At times humorous and others haunting, Joyce explores the loneliness of the human condition, culminating with "The Dead, " called "one of the greatest short stories ever written" (T. S. Eliot), where a man experiences an epiphany that changes him forever.