why do boys keep getting molested and beaten up in this book?

That's what happens in Dublin

That's what happens everywhere.

Early 1900s Dublin was a profoundly shit place.

It still is, but only on the north side. The south side is full of insufferably posh people however so the north is actually preferable.

t, lived there for 5 years

In what stories? I was under the impression that in "An Encounter" the boy is not molested in any literal sense.

>>8460919
Joyce is such a pervert his sexual fantasies permeate everything he wrote. There are scenes of defecation described in great detail in Ulysses

>>8460919
Stop shitposting

An encounter is the only story in which a boy may be at risk of being molested but in the end he isn't. You're spreading false information

>>8460972
no.

>>8460919
I'll give a tl;dr of this book

Character misses opportunity, remains paralysed and unfulfilled in some way, or is crushed by routine against the backdrop of ragged children and the words catholic and protestant now and then

>>8461134
yep paralysis is the main theme of the book after all (preluded by The Sisters where the priest dies of some kind of literal paralysis)

>>8460919
Check my Dublins

>>8461109
Yes.

They just do it where you can't see.

Behind the sheds and hedges and inside disused latrines.