ANALYSIS OF “THE DEAD” BY J.JOYCE

“The Dead” is a short story written in 1914 by J. Joyce belonging to “Dubliners”, a collection of fifteen stories.  The story can be divided into three main parts: the first one deals with the arrival of the guests at the annual dance and dinner party held by Kate and Julia Morkan and their young niece, Mary Jane Morkan. The second sequence presents the development of the party with piano performances and dances. The third part is set in a hotel’s room and the main characters are Gabriel Conroy  and his wife Gretta. The first two sequences can be connected by the theme of tradition because of the party is repeated every year in the same way. On the contrary the third sequence represent an event out of the routine which moves the two characters’ feelings.

The main character of the story is Gabriel Conroy.  In the opening paragraphs of Joyce's story, there is much anticipation surrounding Gabriel's arrival. Once he does appear at the  party, the hosts  immediately come to greet him. A reader can only picture him as someone of importance. In his encounter with Miss Ivors he appeared disturbed and upset because she calls him a “West Briton”. He begins to reflect and convince himself he has done nothing wrong. To the reader he seems somewhat unsure in his internal defense. He gets nervous and breaks off the conversation he is having. Gabriel appears to be a confident man just when the situations are organized and they don’t bring unexpected consequences. In other cases he is not able to control his own feelings. Lastly, Gabriel finds his last bastion of male dominance foiled when Gretta confesses her love for the dead Michael Furey.  Gabriel becomes bothered by his wife's state. The narrator doesn’t say much about Gretta, but every information about her are filtered by Gabriel’s opinion and feelings. The author does not give her the chance to express herself. Other significant characters are Misses Morkan. Their only worry is to make sure the party spends without problems.

The story is set in Dublin at or just before the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, which celebrates the manifestation of Christ’s divinity to the Magi. The title of the story reveals the immobility of the society: the dead are the Irish people who fit to live in old tradition. After Gretta’s confession he reflects on his own controlled, passionless life, realizing  that life is short and those who leave the world like Michael Furey, Gretta’s first love, with great passion, live more fully than people like himself.

In the most of the stories in “Dubliners”, a character has a desire, faces obstacles to it, then ultimately relents and suddenly stops all actions. These moments of paralysis show the characters’ inability to change their lives and reverse the routines that hamper their wishes. The story presents another important feature of Joyce’s narrative style: the epiphany. It begins at the end of the party when Gabriel saw Gretta standing outside a room listening to a song. When Gretta reveals him that she was thinking of her lover, Michael, he is not jealous but he feels sad because he realizes that all emotions he had seen in her wife were not signal of love for him but for a dead.

“The Dead” presents some forms of symbolism. First of all the name Gabriel refers to the angel who announced the Virgin Mary of her pregnant. Other important symbols are music and snow. Music signifies the theme of the past, Gretta signifies the theme of alienation;  these themes seem to converge in the snow, which is the story’s primary symbol. The snow, like the mutual alienation between Gretta and Gabriel, symbolically forms timeless connections between humanity.  The snow covering all Ireland represents the paralysis of Irish society. It  is also a symbol of rebirth for Gabriel because when it will melt nature will be alive again. Gabriel makes conscious that the snow is covering the hotel but also the grave of Michael Furey. It emerges a parallelism between live and dead.