The Dead Response

One particular story in James Joyce’s Dubliners, “The Dead”, serves as an interesting place to exam the role of analysis and theme in a piece of fiction. The story follows the interactions of a wealthy man named Gabriel at an annual party held by the Morkans where he is confronted with tense situation after tense situation until he is finally thrust into center stage in a convoluted and contentious toast where he praises the old traditions and virtues such as hospitality while calling the need to let be forgotten the past and embrace the present. The story ends with his conversation with Gretta over unrequited love and him returning to his bed, looking out at the snow covered Ireland and festering in bitter thoughts.

               The bitter thoughts, of course, are those over his dear Gretta’s passion for someone named Michael Furey who she had loved previously and how even beyond his death he remains in memoriam. Gabriel’s relationship with Gretta is one of where he tries to accentuate dominance, to amorously control Gretta, but realizes that he is incapable of this when he realizes that someone before him has experienced her love in greater passions and still captivates it. He sadly comes to terms “how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life” when another had died for her (Joyce 223). It is what possesses him towards the end, when he lies in bed looking out at the snow that fell “upon all the living and the dead” as though to signify that time and indifference escape no one, that all things recede to the past (Joyce 225). But the snow also recedes, giving birth to newer things, and in memoriam we carry the traditions of the deceased with us. This is indicated in how Gabriel feels a flowering new appreciation for his wife in lieu of this shocking story about Micheal Furey. But this is felt in a juncture, a cross-roads, between the world of the living and that of the dead, where his “identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world” (Joyce 225). He is being blanketed in this metaphorical snow as well.

               Also signified in this powerful image is the toast he makes at the party as well, where he lauds the hospitality of his hosts, but also lauds the progress of civilization and reminds the guests not to mourn the things of the dead. But this is a very contradictory passage because he constantly brings up how rare the virtues of hospitality and humanity are nowadays, marking them almost as tantamount, and so is doing a disservice to them when he says such things must be laid to rest. He, towards the end, thinks of “Poor Aunt Julia” who will soon die and be left in passing, but the idea therefore is that, between both his love and the party, that this company shall go, and with his own resurrection of character realize that in order to live unfettered and unchained people, and society, must detach themselves from the past while still keeping it in memoriam (Joyce 223).