Answer: Halloween October 31) is the Celtic New Year’s Eve and Feast of the Dead, Christianized as the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin and All Saints (November 1) and All Souls (November 2). In Irish folk custom, it is a night of remembrance of dead ancestors and anticipation of the future through various fortune-telling games. This Halloween story, “Clay,” is about Maria, a middle-aged spinster, who works in the kitchen of a laundry established for the reform of prostitutes. Readers follow Maria from the routine of her job there, as she makes her way across the city of Dublin to the seasonal festivities at the home of her former nursling, Joe Donnelly. In these few scenes, James Joyce draws a complex character portrait that, by means of its symbolic devices, conveys much of Maria’s past, present, and future.
Explanation:
