Analysis of The Dead, in Dubliners by James Joyce

The Dead is the last of the stories, the collection "the Dubliners." Joyce combines in a single story with a strong symbolic value all the themes dear to him and dealt with separately in other stories and gives the reader a vision of the history of Ireland. Fundamental issues: paralysis of the individual and society, inadequacy, death, folding themselves vs. openness to others. themes and symbols lead to the manifestation of Gabriel at the end of the story.

The story itself 'and' very simple, we follow Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta to the annual luncheon of the sisters Morkan. The inadequacy, smallness and moral apathy of Gabriel are highlighted at various times by attempting to ridicule the waitress who goes to the speech at the dinner in which no mention of Browning 'cause fears that diners can not understand her nationalist tirade where idealizes the past ireland and its people, who do not know. At the end of the evening takes his wife deep in thought and almost did not recognize it, as if it were another. At home they have a comparison, Gretta was remembered as a young man in Galway and was passionately loved by a boy who died prematurely.

Dublin is an unreal city, a modern cityscape and the centre of Paralysis (physical, moral, intellectual) represent the impossibility to be protagonist of your life; spiritual paralysis: Dubliners don't know they're dying, they think they're alive before dying and death represent public life. They live in a meaningless reality and empty life because they're empty men and they don't have the strength to get a way out. Church is responsible of paralysis because is a repressive cloud that takes away the possibility to take choices, it dominates human mind. 

It Not clear in the end whether the epiphany bring Gabriel to be a better husband, a better man or just be a painful moment of awareness before returning to withdraw into himself. I think gabriel, through the mechanism of the Epiphany (which for him would be the revelation of the soul) realizes his meanness, to be interested only in his social condition and he never really loved his wife as it did michael Furey.

death as a theme and 'always present in the whole structure of the story, the faces of the characters in their names, the first word of the story and' Lily (the flower of the dead) and the last word 'dead.