"The Dead"

Jei Woo

            In his collection of short stories titled, Dubliners, James Joyce displays his mastery of the craft of the short story in a particular piece, “The Dead,” which follows a certain dinner party in Dublin. The predominant theme that underlies the entirety of the short story seems to be the relationship between life and death.

Joyce weaves this potent theme into the piece through a number of narrative techniques: the talk of the “dead” resonates throughout conversations between characters and the thoughts of characters, and at a certain point in the story, the bittersweet remembrance of the dead causes a dramatic turn in the plot. When he is introduced with respect to the hostesses of the party around which the story takes place, the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, is described as “the son of their dead elder sister, Ella…” (188). Gabriel’s dead mother reappears again as a memory in his mind when he happens upon an old photograph: “A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage” (196). Though Ella passed away, a simple look at a photograph stirs an emotional change within Gabriel; merely looking at her face resurrects an image of her that almost seems alive from the array of memories.

In addition to Gabriel’s dead mother, Joyce addresses the notion of the “dead” or “being dead” when the party group discusses the ascetic lifestyle of monks, specifically their choice to sleep in coffins rather than comfortable beds. Mary Jane, the youngest of the three hostesses of the party, comments, “The coffin…is to remind them of their last end” (211). However, Mary Jane’s response, referring to the end of a person as when they die, is ironic because Joyce’s message concerning the relationship between the living and the dead is revealed in the climax of the story, which occurs after the party when Gabriel and his wife Gretta are alone in their hotel room. After hearing one of the partygoers sing a song at the actual party, Gretta reveals to Gabriel that as a young girl, she was once in love with Michael Furey, a boy who, though terribly sick at the time, walked to her house in the rain to see her one last time before she left for the convent. Gretta breaks down in irreconcilable remorse, which shows how much of an effect memories of the dead possess on the living. Joyce emphasizes the omnipresence of the dead even after their physical bodies have deteriorated. The dead, as demonstrated by Ella and Michael Furey, have almost as much influence on human beings as do the living; once Gretta hears the old song Michael used to sing, she is captured in a semi-catatonic state of intense emotion.

Through the short story “The Dead,” James Joyce suggests that there is a relationship between the living and the dead, which transcends the physical world. Instead, the living and the dead both inhabit a single plane, one of a metaphysical quality of memory, emotion, and soul.