The Cleansing of Death

There will always be concepts universal to humankind—among them, and often most prominently in discussion of literary themes that parallel the real world, are the ideas of death and love. Within both of these concepts, there are subsections and varied perceptions of what they mean, and in some instances, they cross over in order to give the other a certain depth they couldn’t tackle without being supported. In James Joyce’s “The Dead,” published as one part of a collection under the title of Dubliners in 1914, such themes are expressed overtly through the protagonist, Gabriel, and his wistful wife, Gretta.

 

Death, obviously, plays a large role in the end of the story: Gretta, hung up on her childhood friend, has helped his memory survive in a way his body could not be sustained. Gabriel considers the possibility, then, that it is “better [to] pass boldly into that other world” (194), as someone who fell in their prime, rather than to lose one’s glory with age and be remembered for the way they left than the way they lived.  Gabriel notices his own faults especially well when compared to Michael—not because Michael was necessarily a better person than Gabriel, but rather, because Gabriel suddenly and violently feels inferior to someone who has long since passed.

 

Because Michael died young, Gretta’s memories of him are both nostalgic and biased: to the average person, it feels wrong to disrespect the ghost, as it were, of someone who is now deceased by dwelling on their faults; and from a less active standpoint, Michael had less time to make mistakes. Even in the short timeframe we see in “The Dead,” Gabriel is nigh-constantly awkward, fumbling through conversation and inadvertently offending people. He’s not a bad person, and is in fact well-liked by his family, but Gabriel, by the very virtue of living, is bound to falter in ways that Michael cannot.

 

In this way, it seems as though it’s better to die young and glorious rather than to live out your life—but at the same time, while Gabriel thinks this, fairly, with basis, the fact that he is alive to have this epiphany means that he has the chance to use it and apply it to himself for the sake of growth. It worries Gabriel that he doesn’t know his wife as well as he could, despite years of marriage, but the knowledge of a person, as well as the love of one, is a two-way street: he has to give her the chance to open up about what is clearly a sore, though significant topic for her, and she has to learn to treat him with the sensitive care he apparently requires, without letting him feel as though he’s being compared to someone she may not have even loved romantically.

 

All in all, I feel as though Joyce does an excellent job of expressing the paranoia of an insecure individual in a committed relationship through the lens of comparison and death, as well as the bigger picture of the way death forces us to reconsider relationships and the way we view people. I, personally, would love to be able to explore the nuances of characterization and uncertainty, because it’s a difficult, though universal emotion, that can seep down into the deepest roots of a character, and I think noting the way Joyce has used it is a good lesson to take away.