The Dead

“The Dead,” a short story in James Joyce’s collection called Dubliners, is an Irish story about a man who’s class has left him classless and in fear of death and the effects of the past on the present. The story is set at a Christmas dinner at the home of Kate and Julia Morkan and their niece Mary Jane Morkan. It is an annual dinner where, much like everything else in Ireland, seems to only get more and more repetitive and droll. The same people are in attendance at the party and the same events occur. The “always-drunk” Freddy Malins is already drunk when he arrives, the same guests are in attendance, there is a dinner, and then a return home. Seemingly, the only difference is that the hostesses favorite nephew, Gabriel, is feeling more and more out of place and resentful of his homeland.

            At first, after inferring that the maid, Lily, should get married soon, Gabriel gives her a holiday tip instead of an apology when she reacts negatively to his discussion of her love life. Then, once the usual dancing begins, Gabriel is paired up with Mrs. Ivors, who is in his same profession, but proceeds to get into an argument with her after she chastises him for his lack of patriotism and burst out proclaiming that he is sick of his country. Following his rash declaration, Gabriel takes his place at the head of the table, cuts the meat, and makes his speech (as usual) and proceeds to compliment his aunts on their admirable hostess skills and talks of how such skills are no longer appreciated the way they once were both the dead and the past are gone and we must focus on the present.

            This, however, was a contradiction in and of itself. Gabriel urged his friends and family to focus on the present but in the same breath complimented the past over the present by saying that his hostesses would have been appreciated and valued far more in the past than they do today. Gabriel’s wife, Gretta, brings him back into the past when she reveals that an old lover of hers, Michael Furey, died in the snow while waiting outside of her window. This is when one truly discovers how much of an outsider Gabriel is and how, at heart, he needs a sense of control over his surroundings more than anything, but it is his need for control that has made me grow to hate his own country. He hates the predictability and the mundaneness of life, but he needs it in order to have control over others and his surroundings. Gabriel is turned off by Gretta’s story of her old lover because it brought to light the fact that he was not the only man she would cry over, he could not control her feelings, and that he had never loved anyone the way that young Michael loved Gretta. Also, it brings back in the idea of the connection between the dead and the past with the present. Michael died waiting for Gretta outside in the cold, and him, as well as the rest of the dead, laid as buried under the snow as the living were (thereby bridging the connection between the past and the present). The moral of the story is that one cannot hold onto only the past, as Gretta did, or only the present, as Gabriel tried to do. Past events and people are the foundations for the present and they cannot and should not be forgotten or left behind.