The Dead Analysis

The Dead is a short story belonging to Dubliners, a collection of stories written by James Joyce. It deals with the traditional event organized by Kate and Julia Morgen in Christmas' time. The two main characters are Gabriel and his wife Gretta, that took active part in the developing party. The story is set in Dublin in 1904.

When the party ends the couple reaches the hotel where Gretta confesses his husband why she has been so sad during all the evening: she remembered about a guy, Michael Furey with whom she was in love with. He was terribly ill, he suffered of tuberculosis. One cold night he moved from his house to Gretta's one only to see her before her departure. He died the day after.

MAIN CHARACTERS :

1. Gabriel : he is an intelligent man who can base on important studies and on a good attitude to the rhetorical language. He should be committable because a lot of people at the party calls him when there are some problems to solve. He seems self-confident and sure of himself, but he is not. Indeed , he represents the typical Dublin man, baffled and aborted. And all this comes as an evidence when Gretta confessed him she was thinking to his first love because he felt as if he had never been his husband.
2. Gretta : she seems to be not a very important character until the end of the story, which seems turning around Gabriel. At the beginning she is little described as Gabriel's point of view, so the reader looks at her as Gabriel does. But her characterisation immediately changes when we read about her standing on the stairs, listening to some music played in a closed room: she is paralysed, she is travelling back with her memory to something happened that changed his life , something that she keep as a secret and she can vividly remember: her first love, Michael.

The title, an adjective turned into a noun, refers to the important considerations Gabriel did when her wife shared her secret with him: alive people are incredibly closed and linked to died people.

They shared memories of a time that will never come back, but they shared a paralysis too. Dead people are obviously paralysed in that they cannot move, alive people are paralysed  because they are not able to make themselves free from suffocating traditions, live ,other people thoughts.

The consideration is perfectly rendered by the image of the snow, which covers the barrows and the entire Ireland, she covers dead as she covers alive people.