Analysis of the last part of The Dead (from “She was fast asleep”), focusing on the use of language

The last part of The Dead is of central importance inside the story. Indeed it revolves around Gabriel’s epiphany and acknowledgement of his weakness.

The entire section is Gabriel’s inner monologue, where he reflects about his situation, gradually extending his conclusions to the mankind. It is interesting to notice that there is no introduction to Gabriel’s thoughts, and the entrance in the working of his mind comes naturally, as if it were a normal consequence to the events previously narrated.

Moreover, the topic shifts from mundane facts to an existential level: this shift is also marked by words such as “life” and “death” which are often repeated. Gabriel’s mood in this part is dejected and disillusioned, but also alienated; he feels as if “he and she [Gretta] had never lived together as man and wife”, and this paves the way to an analysis where the limits of Gabriel’s case are broken to leave place to a reflection which involves the whole mankind. The first thought that crosses the protagonist’s mind regards time; before arriving at the hotel, Gabriel had happily remembered the times when he and his wife fell in love, and he believed those times could be transferred to the present, but now time assumes a more obscure face, showing his destructive force. Indeed Gabriel stops idealizing his wife, recognizing in her a decaying being, and admits that her face “was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved death”.

The unstoppable passing of time will also condemn the party at his aunts’ house; it was a ritual which happened every year, yet Gabriel realizes Aunt Julia’s weariness, and he imagines that she will soon be dead. The monologue finally comes to his conclusion, as Gabriel understands that living in a world where there is no possibility of fulfilling our desires, and where we have to be condemned to a slow but inevitable decay, is no real living. Thus, all preoccupations become stupid and absurd, and we should let ourselves go while we still experience some joy, rather than going on living among the sufferings. Gabriel gradually sees around him some shadows, and he understands they are the dead people’s shadows, and his own soul seems to go with them.

The sound of the snow impacting against the frame of the window temporarily breaks his flux of thoughts, but it only contributes to aliment his epiphany. The snow covers the entire landscape in Ireland and spreads “through the universe”, without distinguishing between dead and alive. Snow symbolizes both dead and paralysis; it covers everything, blocking objects under his heavy blanket, but it also absorbs sounds, making everything silent, like people who cannot communicate their suffering to each other. Finally, the “voyage to the west”, who had been suggested by Miss Ivory during the ball, assumes here a symbolical meaning, because the west is the direction towards Michael Fury’s grave, but it is also the direction of the sunset, which recalls the inevitable end of life.