Something about the Dubliners feels like winter stories. And something about the way Joyce writes simply glows, through the gloom, through the dark and deep and chill that winter brings to the bones. His characters are often stuck in moments of indecision, of paralysis, swaying on the edge of an abyss. Sometimes they are faced with big decisions. Sometimes, they are paralyzed because they dare not break out of the routine that has come to govern their lives. He does not look upon them unkindly because of this paralysis. Joyce is, as evidenced by the lines I quoted below, a lover. He brings the reader to the edge, that plucked-string tension of heightened emotions - and then, with the very last story, "The Dead," he throws a blanket over it all, silent Charon, and with a sigh, all those emotions are released into the ether. 
 "One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age." (The Dead) 
 --- 
 "Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work." (The Sisters) 
 "But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires." (Araby) 
 "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her." (Eveline) 
 (holy shit, "A Little Cloud" is everything.) 
 "A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fires of stars moment son their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her household cares had not quenched all their souls' tender fire. In one letter that he had written to her then he had said: Why is it that words like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?" (The Dead) 
 "wild and radiant hearts" (The Dead)