Considering the title, one could expect the short story to be about past and present, sinche “the dead” represent our memory and our past; the story does not present chapters. The structure is defined by paragraphs and it is 3rd person narrator; there are two main characters:

Gabriel: proud intellectual, one of the main characters, he’s afraid of failing. His character comes to life most thanks to dialogue with the other characters and to his thoughts, expressed throught the narrator.

Gretta: Gabriel’s wife, she is not present since the beginning. She seems a detached person, emotial and very dependant on her past.

The story is setting in Dublin streets, Ireland; The story ends in a night, but it depends a lot on the characters’ past.

Sometimes the most important things are the little particulars that one tends not to notice; concept of human being as the product of his past (he’s always influenced by it).

Proudness and superiority obscure relationships with people around us; the use of dialogue equilibrates narration and characters’ thoughts.

Little use of description (sometimes it is detailed) on places and on people’s physical aspect or clothes to make the reader imagine the scene (sometimes environment is important since it seem to represent characters’ mood).

The language used is formal, the register changes according on who’s speaking, dialogues are composed by brief lines and it is a Frequent use of adjectives to describe aspects, places and people’s mood, emotions.