Joyce's style of writing in "The Boarding House," and in Dubliners generally, is much more accessible to the casual reading audience than the stream of consciousness techniques he utilizes in his novels. Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man both explore the perspective of a single character, conveying his thoughts and meditations as they occur from moment to moment, mimicking the unstructured nature of human consciousness. Joyce's goal for "The Boarding House" and the other short stories in Dubliners diverges from that of Ulysses and Portrait. These stories are not written as reflections on the inner turmoil and thought processes of individual characters; rather, they serve as "slice of life" vignettes exploring the perspectives of multiple characters and their relationships with one another.
"The Boarding House" engages its characters with a greater level of remove, positioning readers as external observers instead of placing them within the stream of a single character's consciousness. To account for this, Joyce uses relatively straightforward language, as opposed to sensationalized, figurative, or repetitive prose. The structure of the story adheres to that of a traditional narrative, chronicling the relatively simple lives of a Dublin family. Joyce fits the direct, uncomplicated style of his language to the direct, relatively predictable lives that his subjects lead.
