THE DEAD: analysis

The dead is a short story written by James Joyce in which the important element is the “Epiphany” because is the moment when man takes distances from the reality.
The story has a third person narrator, Lily is the narrator during the first two paragraphs and secondly, through the arrival of Gabriel, the narrator changes.

Talking about the language, Joyce uses a simple language as Eveline, but the language uses during Gabriel’s monologues is elaborated because he wants to impress all the guests and he chooses a specific register to underline his personality.
The time is very important because recalls the “stream of consciousness” indeed the present fuzes together with the past’s memories for this reason there’s no changes or improvements.
Gabriel is the protagonist of the story and presents himself as the better person and superior to the others indeed it probably represents Joyce if he stayed in Dublin because all dubliners live in a sense of frustration. On the other hand, Gretta represents Joyce’s wife because as Gretta, she had a love story with a boy named Michael who died.

Finally, the two important themes are not only the Epiphany but also the Death: the story seems not to be connected with the death but with politic, culture and nationalism, but the atmosphere and the tone during the whole story becomes “dark”. Words like “dark” and “pale” are used to describe physical appearance of the characters, and last but not least the story ends with the imaginative death of Michael