THE DEAD by James Joyce

“The Dead” is the last stories of James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914). This is a collection of 15 short stories forming a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.

The story starts with the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary Jane Morkan, the housemaid Lily frantically greets guests.

The party, probably set on the 6^th of January, draws together a variety of relatives and friends.

 Kate and Julia particularly await the arrival of their favorite nephew, Gabriel Conroy. The tale in particular is centred on Gabriel’s insecurities, his social ineptness. For example, when Gabriel arrives at the party attempts to chat with Lily but she but she snaps in reply to his question about her love life. The story ends at the point when Gabriel discovers that there were lots of things he didn’t know about his wife's past.

The party keeps going on with a piano performance by Mary Jane. More dancing follows, which finds Gabriel paired up with Miss Ivors, a fellow university instructor. It follows a discussion between Gabriel and Miss Ivors. Indeed the lady embarrasses Gabriel by calling him a “West Briton” for writing literary reviews for a conservative newspaper. At the end of the conversation he says a phrase that will come back in his mind along the story: he states that he is sick of Ireland. His social ineptness is here very clear. It is very rude to say you hate Ireland at a party full of Irish people.

Later, guests begin to leave, and Gabriel recounts a story about his grandfather and his horse, which forever walked in circles even when taken out of the mill where it worked.

After the anecdote, Gabriel realizes that Gretta was feeling nostalgic after having heard the song that Mr. Bartell D’Arcy sings in the drawing room.

Gretta says that the song reminds her of the time when she was a girl in Galway and in love with a boy named Michael Furey. The remainder of the text delves further into Gabriel's thoughts about his wife’s past, the past, the living and the dead. It is ambiguous whether the epiphany is just an artistic and emotional moment or is meant to set the reader pondering whether Gabriel will ever manage to escape his smallness and insecurity. Seeing the snow at the window, he imagines it covering the cemetery where Michael Furey rests, as well as all of Ireland.

The story is set on the 6^th January, that is the Epiphany, underlining a religious background behind the scene.

So it seems as if J.Joyce recalls to one of his narrative devices: the epiphany.

Through the use of this technique Joyce arranges the text into two parts. In other words, the epiphany signs the passage from the first part of the story to the second. Definitely Gabriel’s epiphany starts when he noticed is wife listening to a song. Arrived to their hotel room Gretta told him that the song had remembered her Micheal Furey.

Gretta’s revelation made Gabriel realize that all the emotions he had seen in his wife were not signal of love for him but for a dead. So, the epiphany becomes a narrative technique used by Joyce to explore the character’s feelings, and also to destroy their certainties.

So the music has a central position in The Dead, as far as the snow.

As it is said in the last part of the narrative, the snow covering all Ireland stands for the paralysis of Irish society.

In my opinion the snow could be interpreted as a way that melt the living and the death, the present and the past. Indeed the snow covers the hotel and the living people in Ireland as covers the Micheal Furey’s grave.

Considering the structure of the narrative, it seems as if it is organised in situations. What’s more, in every situation that occurs at Kate and Julia’s party is built on the character Gabriel Conroy. Every experience he made during that night allowed him to better comprehend himself. So, Gabriel  makes experiences that let it examine his own life and human life in general.

In particular, Gabriel sees himself as a person shadow, wandering in a world in which the dead and the living meet. For example in his speech during the dinner he insisted on the division between the living and the dead, also referring to the past and to the present. But when Gabriel heard about Micheal Furey, he understood that memories can break such division and became a bridge between past and present. As a consequence, dead and living became melt. So, Joyce revaluate the importance of literature as a way of remembering. The last picture, that is Gabriel looking out of his hotel window, the falling snow, let he think about the human condition. He thinks how the snow is covering Michael Furey’s grave just as it covers those people still living, as well as the entire country of Ireland.

So, living people is on the same level of dead people. The story leaves open the possibility that Gabriel might change his attitude and embrace life, even though his shadow dwelling on the darkness of Ireland closes Dubliners with miserable acceptance. He will eventually join the dead and will not be remembered.

Central in the story is the concept of routine. The Morkans’ party consists of the kind of deadening routines that make existence so lifeless in Dubliners. As a matter of fact every situation in the party repeat each year: Gabriel gives a speech, Freddy Malins arrives drunk, everyone dances the same memorized steps, everyone eats. So, the anedocte of the horse becames now clear. Like the horse that circles around and around the mill these Dubliners settle into an expected routine at this party. Such monotomy fixes the characters in a state of paralysis: they became unable to break from the usual activities they do. Their lifes so, are boring lifes, without significative experiences.