Analysis of the Short Story The Dead by J. Joyce

The Dead is the last short story of J. Joyce's Dubliners. Right from the title, the reader can imagine who the deads are: they are all Irish people, dead because of their paralysis. So the story presents again the theme of paralysis, that characterizes all the collection but here it is underlined stronger than in the other stories.
The story is composed of two parts: the party at aunts' and the scene in the hotel.
In the first part the writer presents the reader the paralysis of society throughout the annual party of protagonist's aunts: repetitive actions made every year, the guests who are always the same (an example is Freddy Malins who always arrives drunk) and also the same food. Also the characters are traditional and old: Kate and Julia Morkan, Gabriel's aunts, are old and decaying not only in their aspect, but also in their actions and thoughts. They are only projected to the past, without thinking to their present life, and in this sense they are dead. Also the guests symbolize the paralysis of society and its problems: an example is alcholism, that was a symbol of decaying of man. Moreover everyone of them knows the passeges of the party: the ball, the dinner, the music and they seem satisfied with all this routine.
Nevertheless one of them thinks in a different way. The protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, is a writer and literary man. Like all the other characters of Dubliners, he is characterized by a complex mind and an inner contrast: he does not love his country but at the same time he is not able to leave it. It emerges in the discussion with Miss Ivors, a nationalist who thinks there is not a better country than hers and there is no reason to leave it. She accuses Gabriel to be a West Briton only because he wrote a literary review for a newspaper she considers a supporter of West Briton part. But he arrives at the end to affirm he is sick of his country and that Irish traditions and language do not belong to him. But Gabriel is not coherent with himself and he adfirms all the opposite he really thinks during his annual speech: he admires Irish ospitality and all traditions, and among them his aunts' annual party. He reflects also about life and death: he says they are live in the present and that they have to live without thinking about the past and sad things like death, but he himself does not do it. Gabriel does not say they are already dead because of their restricted mind, too attached to traditions and he will realize it only at the end of the story.
Moreover, after dancing with Miss Ivors, he goes near a window, as he tries to escape from a danger. He looks out of it and he notices it is snowing: he is in the house, in a hot place with people he knows, but at the same time he imagines how may be out of it, the cold, the silence and the solitude.
In the first part the character of Gretta is also introduced throughout Gabriel's point of view. He considers her a nice woman and when he sees her absorbed in her thoughts while she is listening to the song, he feels for her a strong desire. She is not a traditional woman and it is possible to understand it because of Gabriel's mother opinion about her: she did not want her son married her because he thought she had not got a sufficient education to be his wife. She is a sensual woman, introduced throughout her feelings that are very important in the second part of the story, where she can be considered live because of her feelings her her capacity to feel something.
In the second part Gabriel and his wife Gretta arrive to the hotel where they are staying during their stay in Dublin. Gabriel feels a strong desire for his wife but she is worried about something. She reveals her husband she is thinking of a past lover, Michael Furey, who used to sing her the same song they heard at the party. She suffers because he died young: he was ill but his desire to see her before her departure for Dublin lead him to go out even if the weather was bad. She says he died for her: Gretta's story shocks Gabriel because a dead has replaced him in Gretta's thoughts and it is the contrary he supported during his speech, when he invited the guests to not think to the past and deads. It makes feel him weak and only a replacement and it brings him away all his certainties about his life. He thinks that all of them are becoming only shadows: life is not in them anymore, they are living in routine, respecting all the rules of tradition but without the fire of life. Gabriel knows it, so he thinks that it is better to die young but it the middle of the passions, like a hero, and not to be old with a fade and empty life. The writer writes that Gabriel's soul has approached the world of deads and that they are always in living's world. He feels his own identity is fade, he is dead because of the passive way he has been living until now, but he is conscious of it and if he really wants to change, he could do it. He has approached inner death, but realizing it, he can save himself because he is not completely dead.
The snow is important also in the second part: at the end of the story it falls covering all the paralysed country and also living and dead. It may be considered the symbol of death because it is cold and it makes everything silen, but also as a purifying element, that erases everything in order to prepare a new life and a new order.

The writer uses a third person omniscient narrator, who tells the story from Gabriel's point of view. In this way the attention is focused on character subjectivity and feelings, underlining also his inner contrast and making understand the reader he is not a hero, but a real man with weakness fears. Realism presents the situation of Ireland but also the situation of every man in that period, when all the certainties disappeared.
The world Mr Joyce presents is static, focused only on social routines and tradition, without breaking the schemes and daring, without imagining and then trying to realize a better life.
The writer underlines the difference between the two parts also with the rythm of narration: the first part is slow and boring, in order to criticize that kind of stereotypes, while the second one is more thoughthful and goes deeply in the analysis of what life and death mean for the protagonist.