The Dead is a short story belonging to Dubliners by James Joyce and as the other stories of the collection has the aim to provide an example of the society of Dublin. The short story can be devided in two main sequences.

The first one is about the party organized by Morkan sisters and their niece Mary Jane. The writer presents the event as a traditional writer would do, indeed he focuses on every particularities of the objects, of the people and he is not interested in the character's subjectivity. At the party Gabriel Conroy and his wife are present. Mr Gabriel is a man of letters and he represents a point of reference to the poeple who were present at the party, indeed he has a good reputation. Moreove is the main character of the story. In the sequence Jame Joyce adopts the traditional novel writing style, that is the attention to external particularities and to the plot and the use of a rethorical language, but he does it in order to criticise the traditional, suffocating and paralyzing life in Dublin.
In the second sequence the writer focuses on Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta Conroy. After the party they go the to hotel and get in the room they booked before. Mr Gabriel loves his wife and wants to pass a night of passion with her, but she is not interested because she is sad. She tells Mr Gabriel she has remembered a young boy who loved her and died for her. Mrs Conroy's romantic vision of life is in opposition to Mr Gabriel's sense of unsuitability. Gabriel Conroy becomes an antihero because he is paralyzed , indeed he wants to act but in the same time he can't do it. In the short story the dead Gabriel Conroy becames the paradigm of Irish's paralysis, indeed in James Joyce opinion people in Ireland are like deads. Furthermore the story is told by Mrs Gabriel's point of view through a stream of consciousness