Gabriel's epiphany

James Joyce

Dubliners (1914)

From “The Dead”

The text I'm going to analyze is an extract from “Dubliners” by James Joyce, in particular from the chapter “The Dead”. The protagonists, Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta, have just left Gabriel's aunts' Christmas party and they are back in their hotel room. Before leaving the party, Gretta hears a song and the memory of Michael Furey, a young man who died for her love when he was seventeen, comes to surface in her mind. Therefore the funtion of the extract is to narrate the effect this event has on Gabriel.

The extract opens with a short sentence, “She was fast asleep”, that underlines the difference between the condition of Gretta and her husband: while she falls into a deep sleep that nothing can turbate, he observes her and, left alone with his unconscious, he began to ask himelf several questions about his actual life and his wife's past. From the first paragraph, the reader can immediately notice that the woman's name is never mentioned in the Gabriel's thoughts, and then even the narrator is not omniscient, while her husband's one is immediately set at the beginning of the sentence, as if Joice wants to indicate which presence will be the predominant one in the story.

The scenes are descripted according to the Modern photographical and detailed attention: Gabriel is studying Gretta's face and also the setting described is the result of the narrative symbolism used by Joice in order to materialize the characters' feelings through the features of the places around them. For example the cold and the stillness of the snow that is covering Dublin with a white surface while Gabriel outlined his thoughts accurately reflect his state of mind: he is in a state of paralysis, he is unable to produce actions or feel, he is in fact cold. Focusing on Gretta's life and loves, Gabriel realizes he is unable to love her in the same way Michael Furey (whose surname recalls the passion) did, and the fact of being just a "poor part in her life" is only one of the many things he could not achieve and get in the course of his life and career. At first, however, he blames the older Gretta whose face "was no longer beautiful".

Another feature of modern literature, the stream of consciousness, is the lack of a chronological order in the description of the events; these, in fact follow one another as well as they crop up in the mind of Gabriel, in a random pattern, are accumulated as the boulders on his conscience and this initiates the epiphany path.

In the following paragraph another scenary, another space and another time, stirs Gabriel: with the mind he first identifies his wife's clothing scattered in the room (another thing that differs from Gabriel Gretta is the fact that, while for the first one are narrated the thoughts, for the second character are described only the physical aspects), and then he makes a leap to the previous hour and the image of his aunt Julia materializes in his mind ("Poor aunt Julia!"). In particular, he emphasizes her old age and therefore the possible proximity to death, but the thing that strikes him is not the lack of Aunt Julia, but the pain of her sister Kate at her funeral. Even in a time of such despair, Gabriel imagines to fail in consoling his aunt, as he is failed to do other things.

And in these lines, preceded by a cold atmosphere, Gabriel has the epiphany: “one by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age”. He find out his destiny being part of the category of those who, although alive, are more dead than some dead (Michael Furey) that can live again in the hearts of those who loved them.

In order to emphazise the epiphany moment, Joyce accompanies it by a representative scene: Gabriel, who until now was thought to be unable to externalize feelings, suddenly bursts into tears.

Gabriel is the Modern anti-hero because of his sense of instability and weakness, a man who has never known the real meaning of “love”, and his identity too. He is lonely, more than Michael Furey lying in a grave.