ANALYSIS OF THE DEAD BY JAMES JOYCE

The Dead is a short story written by James Joyce belonging to Dubliners, a collection of fifteen short stories all set in Dublin, reputed by Mr. Joyce the center of a paralysis involving people’s mind and life.

The story The Dead can be analyzed dividing it into two main sequences: the first one, longer than the other, deals with the traditional Christmas party organized by Misses Kate and Julia Morkan and their nephew Mary Jane. The second part is set in a hotel and involves the characters of Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta.

The protagonist of the story is Gabriel Conroy, an intellectual and a writer representing a point of reference for the society. At the beginning he seems to be too much proud of himself but after having read the whole story the reader can understands he is an insecure man, searching everywhere for demonstrations of his own qualities. The author uses Gabriel’s characters to tell the story from his point of view so the reader has got a subjective perspective about the events.

Near Gabriel’s character there is Gretta’s. She is Gabriel’s wife but we really don’t know so much about her because every information is filtered by Gabriel’s opinions and feelings. In the second sequence she turns out as the only one character who is able to express is own feelings and this puts Gabriel into an inner struggle, born from Gretta’s revelations.

Others significant characters are Misses Morkan. They are trapped in tradition and their party represents the manifestation of it: every year they organize the same party with the same guests, the same food, and the same routines. So Kate and Julia Morkan emerge from the story as the paralysis created by Irish tradition, which is criticized by Mr. Joyce.

The paralysis of mind and life significantly appears in the whole story. The title reveals right from the start the immobility of society. So the dead are the Irish people who fit to live in old tradition instead of living as they want to live.

Furthermore the story presents another important feature of Joyce’s narrative style: the epiphany. It signs the passage from the first part of the story to the second. Indeed the epiphany, regarding Gabriel, begins at the end of the party when he saw Gretta standing outside a room listening to a played song. He felt a sudden strong and strange desire for his wife but when they arrived to the hotel Gretta revealed him that the song had reminded her Michael Furey who had been her lover. Gretta’s revelation made Gabriel realize that all the emotions he had seen in his wife were not signal of love for him but for a dead. So he understood Gretta has never loved him as he has always loved her. He also recognized to have been living his life in a passive way: he is not jealous of Michael Furey, he feels a sense of sadness realizing of not have lived his love as passionately as Mr. Furey did.

Thinking about his life, while Gretta is sleeping next to him, Gabriel becomes conscious that maybe people who live passionately expressing all their feelings are to be considered more alive than people who live all their life being paralyzed.