The last paragraph of the last chapter, naming The Dead, is set in a hotel room; where Gabriel and his wife Gretta lodge.

Gretta is sleeping and Gabriel is thinking about the previous conversation with her. She told him about her first lover, who is dead and the topic make Gabriel reflect about life and death.

The scene can be divided in 4 micro-sequences, which are determined by Gabriel’s thoughts: indeed his inner thoughts linger on Gretta’s sleeping body , the feelings he felt while they  were going from the aunts’ house to the hotel  are different from present ones (first microsequence); after that, he takes his mind to the dead and so to aunt Julia’s future death (second microsequence). The thought of death chills the air and he gets closer to his wife as if he needed to feel her hot body to put distant the idea of death, indeed death is cold and dark like a shadow and the snow-clad Dublin. Maybe his passion for Gretta is the only thing makes him live, and he imagines Michael Furey’s figure as if they were in the same situation. J. Joyce creates a continuity between the dead and the living through this similarities. In addition the snow covers both the dead and the living. Room and night are dark like death (third microsequence).

In the fourth microsequence, Gabriel makes explicit the similarity between the living and the dead.    

The reader notes the continuous repetition of words that recalls the idea of death: darkness, grey, shades, dark, dead, falling..  in particular in dark, dead, shades, darkness there was the harsh sound “d”, while the word falling slows down reading, in particular in the phrase the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling where there is a chiasm. Everything and everyone is covered by faintly snow and by faintly death. The novelist expresses Dubliners’ situation of paralysis and inevitable destiny of all human beings, and he underlines these aspects with one by one, they were all becoming shades…fade and wither dismally with age.

The title is repeated at the end of the chapter, from reading The Dead the reader thinks immediatly the chapter deals with someone’s mourning but the expectation is wrong, indeed it deals with the situation of death of the protagonist. He is paralyzed like all Dublin inhabitants, who don’t accept the concept of death and of future change which took them not to act. The in-action makes them dead.

The text is set in close places which transfigure the inner thoughts and the consciousness of Gabriel, whose inner monologue makes up almost the whole chapter.

The important of consciousness’ characters is evident, indeed how we know during the 19^th century philosophers, anthropologists, writers and artist focused their attention on both rational and irrational part of mind.

As in every chapters, The Dead presents a situation of epiphany, that is to say a moment of characters’ revelation of themselves. When Gabriel he was in the hotel room he becomes aware of his situation of isolation and alienation from other inhabitants going to be “dead human beings”.