“The Dead” is the most famous tale of Joyce, conteined in the Dubliners collection.

The title “The Dead” does not allow the reader to understand the specific argument of the tale. But the only information given by the title, is that it is about Death.

The novel took place on a winter night in Dublin. Every year, Kate and Jiulia Morkan (two old ladies of the middle class) and their niece Mary Jane organized a Christmas party. The protagonist are Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. He was Kate and Jiulia’s nephew. At the party, guests speak a lot about music and there was also a popular tenor. Gabriel does not want to perform, whereas Jiulia sings with a feeble voice. When it is time to come back, Gretta stops Gabriel on the stairs: the tenor starts to sing “the Last of Aughrim” and Gretta is on the verge of crying. Greta told Gabriel about a young man, who once lover her and sand that irish song. She had to break this relatioship off before coming to Dublin. Michael had confessed that he would have prefered the Death without her. Afer she had come to the collage in Dublin, Micheal died. Here there is Gabriel’s “epiphany”: he becomes aware of his pettiness and he realizes that he had never loved his wife as Micheal. The man who is alive is spiritually dead, whereas the dead lived more that the physically man alive because it is remembered.

The narration is a third person one and the reader has a total access to Gabriel’s mind because the third person speaks from the point of view of the character. So the principal setting is Gabriel’s mind and the reader can understand the inner characteristics of the protagonist. The stream of counciosness is given voice through the interior monologue and so “The dead” takes part in Modernism.

The central theme is the paralysis of man. Throughout the story there are no conflicts and when they are born they are immediately blocked. People sing and dance. All is still and empty: even the protagonist sees his will of love cancelled after Gretta’ revelation. Gabriel losses happiness like all people who dance at the party. Gabriel becomes still and without feeling and people become their journey to death.

Gabriel's main antagonist is Michael, who died many years earlier, and because of this he sees his world of false certainties crumble.

This is underlined by use of simple past and by the little use of verbs of movement.There is a use of perception’s verbs.  In this tale we can find the “Ephiphany”. Here there are two: Gretta lives the first, who sees the memory of Michael Furey re-emerging in his mind due to a song heard at the party, and thus remembers the one who was his true love; the second is by Gabriel, who understands that he is only a shadow in the existence of his wife when she tells me the story of Michael, and then comes to understand the emptiness of his own and other people's lives.