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 rely  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.
Gabriel seems to be a relevant and important person, but he is not; indeed, right from the start the reader can perceive that there is something wrong with him.
When he reached the party he wore galoshes and he was angry because her wife did not: this makes the reader understand that he wants to be trendy and that he was terribly in love with Gretta, because he accepted that she did not obey him, even if he was her 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. Furthermore, right from the start the readers can understand that she is not a conventional woman or wife, she is not a subdued woman. She creats probles from the very beginning of the narration because she did not conform.

TITLE:

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 and from 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.

SYMBOLS:

According to the use of symbolical realism, one of the techniques adopted by James Joyce in order to render the reality in the most realistic way he knew, the short story contains different symbols.

- the name Gabriel, which refers to the angel of annunciation
- the moment of the dinner, which reminds to the Last Supper
- the surname Furey, which recalls the fury of the passion and of the love
- the music, which triggers the epiphany
- the snow, an extended metaphor which could represent Gabriel's wish to escape from the situation in which he is compelled to be, or the certainty of the nature rebirth, or the peace that will follow after our lives come to an end

EPIPHANY

An epiphany is a narrative technique used by J.Joyce. it is characterized by a moment of illumination, after which the character comes to know something new and deeper about himself.
In the short story it begins when Gretta hears the song " The Lass of Aughrim" and he is fully explored when she comes back to the hotel with her husband, where she reveals him about the relationship she had with a guy, Michael Fury, who died for her.
The epiphany starts by a sensory experience  and it revolves around memories, which are compared to what reality is.
The epiphany makes Gabriel understand that his love is an " only-way- direction "one; Gretta does not love him as much as he loves her and realizes how different he is from Michael.
The distance created by this awareness is concretely represented by the physical distance the couple has in the hotel room: Gretta is sleeping. Lying on the bed, while Gabriel is standing near the window, looking at the snow covering the surrounding.