GABRIEL’S EPIPHANY

The paragraph I am going to analyze is an extract taken from J.Joyce’s “The Dead”, a short story which belongs Joyce’s novel “Dubliners”.

The protagonists of the extract are: Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The couple, according to tradition, attends a Christmas party organized by Gabriel’s ankles. Towards the end of the party Gretta busted in tiers after heard a song by the tenor Bartell D’Arcy. Later, in a hotel room Gabriel wanted to discover what had happened in Gretta’s mind during the tenor’s performance. Gretta has been moved by the memory Michael Furey, a young man who died for the love of her.

The extract is set in a hotel room, and starts with a short sentence : “she was fast asleep”, the intelligent reader understands that Gretta is absent in this passage. After this short introduction starts the interior monologue, the narrator is telling us what troubles Gabriel’s mind through a language of senses and a deep symbolism.

Lines 2-10 : Gabriel is observing his wife, his reflection starts from the sense of sight and hearing. His eyes focuses the attention on Gretta’s “tangled hair” while his ears hears her “deep-drown breath”. The effect of this way of expression gives realism to the scene. Gabriel realizes that Gretta’s heart belongs to Michael Fury, it follows that they have never been a couple but also that his marriage with her was only a farce. Seeing his “wife” he feels a sense of “a strange friendly pity” towards her.

Lines 11-23 : The second part starts with a symbolic image: a boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen down while the fellow of it lay upon its side. This is an example of symbolism, the function is to represents the difference between Gretta and Gabriel, if from one side Gabriel is devastated by the situation on the other Gretta seems paralyzed in an absolute sense, she is physically and mentally absent. Indeed her name does not appears in this extract to better underline this sense of absence. Out of the blue space and time changes, Gabriel goes back and moves his attention on his ankle Julie Morkan, defined by Gabriel as the “young eternal”. He imagines that soon he would be sitting in a drawing-room, dressed in black with his silk hat on his knees, crying and blowing his nose for the death of his ankle Julie. Julie is the symbol of the approaching death, because in the middle of the party she sang and supporting that his voice was more brightness initially: in this way she underlines that the power of her voice is dying as she.

“Yes, yes that would be happen very soon”

Lines24-36: in the third part Gabriel realizes that the shadows of dead are more are more alive in humans ‘mind that the living ones. Gabriel also imagines himself under a “dripping tree, in a region “were dwell the vast hosts of the dead”. This is a symbolic way to convey what Gabriel feels like, he realizes that he is surrounded by dead, which are still living in humans mind. According to Joyce this moment is defined “Epiphany” :a status where events, images, ideas, produce for the reader an explosive recognition of meaning.

Lines 36-46: in the fourth part Gabriel focuses the attention on the outside, he sees the snow falling down. The snow is a symbolic element that means conveys to the reader the idea of paralysis. The snow is the turning point is that which links the living and the dead, because snow covers everything, in this way it brings both at the same situation. Snow is “faintly” that appeals to the sense of taste. In conclusion Gabriel thinks that the living alive only in function of the dead.