# Mr. Doran — Dubliners character guide

> Mr. Doran in Dubliners by James Joyce.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0006-the-boarding-house

## Snapshot

A respectable, anxious clerk whose hand shakes at the razor as he weighs marriage against the ruin of his reputation.

## Who they are

Mr. Doran has spent years cultivating a sober, regular life, and now finds it balanced on the edge of a scandal he cannot brazen out. He is torn between his instinct to remain free and the priest's magnified sense of sin, between contempt for Polly's vulgarity and the memory of his own complicity. His sweating, spectacles-fogging dread makes him the story's most human figure, caught between the fear of losing his job and the fear of being trapped.

## In the story

### [The Boarding House](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/chapters/the-boarding-house)

The anxious lodger who feels trapped into marrying Polly due to social and professional pressures.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/characters/mr_doran
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- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/dubliners_se/characters