So when I reviewed Dubliners I added that I hadn’t finished reading its most celebrated story, “The Dead.” Well, I did today and as usual I have some thoughts.
“The Dead” was beautiful and does everything fiction is supposed to do. I felt that deep pang of emotion in my chest while reading some of these lines, and the ending is just absolutely stunning in both its emotional impact and the sheer beauty of its prose. In fact, the last half of this novella is gut-wrenchingly powerful.
I strongly disagree with William Powell Jones’s assertion that this last story celebrates mature love and provides a sense of hope for the characters alleviating the tension of the all previous stories. This story about Gabriel Conroy and his wife attending a Christmas party at his aunts shows just how pathetic the “mature love” between Gabriel Conroy and his wife, Gretta, happens to be. His own remarks towards the end reveal the long decline in his relationship over the year into a state of emotionless paralysis, which is what makes this sudden burst of emotion for him so exciting.
While he is busy remember all the good times they had in between the dullness, she is busy remembering a long lost lover from her teenage years who died for her out of love sickness. His plans for renewed passion with his wife fizzles out as he learns the truth, and he’s left contemplating his paralyzed life, at first envying the dead ex-lover, but soon moving beyond that envying as he stares out the window at the snow covering Ireland where both the living and dead freeze, suggesting both the living and dead are interchangeable.
The entire story is a metaphor for the paralysis of Irish national life. All the sub-themes of the other stories are repeated in what could be called the capstone of the collection, reiterating characters from previous stories, ideas, motifs, and themes. This story isn’t a hope from those others, but the final nail in the coffin with what those others were trying to achieve.
Gabriel thinks about the events of the day only to accept how absurd his entire life has been, from the speech he gave, to the narcassistic way he acts around his aunts and people, to the vulgar drunks praising him. All of Miss Ivors accusations about him being a West Briton proved to be true. She as the Irish Nationalist calling him out on his absurd existence is the center of the story that connects the beginning, middle, and end.
At the end, Gabriel finally is able to connect with Ireland, the place he rejected this entire time, only to realize Ireland itself is in trouble and paralyzed. The relationship between Gretta and the dead lover, and Gabriel’s subtle turn towards Ireland that moves him closer to Miss Ivor’s position is related to each other in that Joyce suggests the past is always more emotionally satisfying than the present. Even more so he connects this to paralysis by the fact that the past is dead, you can’t ever go back there. Gretta is literally mourning for a corpse right in front of her husband. Miss Ivors is speaking a dead language (when she leaves the party and drops a Gaelic line) that nobody understands anymore. Joyce, while perhaps admiring Miss Ivors’s position as a Irish Nationalist and bemoaning that lost past, also recognizes you cannot base your movement into the future on sentimentalism about the past. In fact, one of the attributes Gabriel criticizes in himself is his own sentimentalism, a very telling moment that shows Miss Ivors’s own positions do not escape scrutiny.
So quite literally this story is about death, how the literal death of a person can cause the death of another person’s self-image, how the death of the past can cause the death of hope for the future.
Bonus Links: Lass of Aughrim, Lass of Aughrim version 2
[...] Link: The Dead [...]
Damn! I don’t have anything to disagree with here. I guess I’ll just have to resort to name-calling.
You’re dumb! And ugly!
[...] I think of James Joyce’s The Dead the first image that comes to mind is that beautifully written absolutely poignant ending, the sort [...]
This helped me with my thesis..thank you!
I think I read in Ellman that Joyce did want to say something positive about Irish traditions and strengths, which might explain some of Jone’s assertions. Have you read Anne Pigone’s rewrite of The Dead – “The Ugly”? The entire story is a metaphor for the paralysis of American national life:-)
Nope, I haven’t read that other story, Leslie. Thanks for the recommendation.
This is a great reading of the story, Eric. I can definitely see where you’re coming from, and your evidence is solid. Knowing what I do about Joyce as an Irishman, I could see how his ultimate statement would be critical toward Ireland. Where I wonder, then, is in his portrayal of Michael Furey; wouldn’t his portrayal of Michael Furey, who is the absolute embodiment of Ireland, be more negative? And why would he make Gabriel so ridiculous in his inability to interact with his own people, in his leanings toward the continent? I read the portrayal of Furey as sympathetic, the portrayal of Gabriel as ironic or critical.
Yes, the snow covers everything in the story, but at the end he is thinking about the literal and metaphorical trip west, a summer trip, and in summer the snow will be gone, won’t it?
I don’t know. You’re ideas are awfully convincing, too.
I’m not sure. Which part does he specifically mention going out in summer? The last two paragraphs end:
He mentions going west in the 4th sentence of the last paragraph, but then uses that as jumping off point to note all the land westward, all of Ireland is covered in a blanket of snow, even Michael Furey, all the living and the dead. All of Ireland is suffocating under the snow (symbolic for death). I read into this a rather bleak picture. On the other hand, the last sentence has an interesting word choice and reaction to such a protrait: “swoon.” Gabriel swoons at this vision, implying a deep ecstasy and joy. Even the line: “like the descent of their last end” embedded in the last line implies an end to the snow?
Yet I also remember distinctly that the overall effect from beginning to end with my close-reading of the last part made me feel the snow was suffocating and paralyzing everything.
Maybe Joyce is being ambiguous on purpose and throwing in a few provocative turns-of-phrase to open it up to both readings because the more I look at it the more I find some of things you mentioned convincing. There do seem to be these random lines and strange word choices that suddenly jump out to imply Gabriel is happy rather than sad at all this death as if he has found a path out, even as he recognizes everything else is dying around him.
Perhaps both are correct? I’m not sure. I need to do a full re-reading at some point.
Eric,
I also need to reread closely. I was referring back to the original context of the trip west rather than just the final mention. When Miss Ivors suggests the trip in the first place, it’s to be a summer trip, isn’t it? So when Gabriel says its time for the trip westward at the end, I take that to mean it’ll literally be that summer trip on which he was invited. You can then infer all the figurative stuff about what a trip “westward” means from there. In any case, for him to take the trip westward, then, for summer to come, the snow must melt, right? That’s what I think it’s saying: everything is paralyzed, but not for long. He swoons at the vision because a) it’s an immense thing to really see the relationship between the living and the dead, and b) he’s ready to overcome his paralysis. His insecurities no longer matter; they can’t hold him back. The snow falls on him now while he is living, but one day it will fall on him while he is dead. No sense in holding back.
Although, if “westward” is, as you say, also paralyzed beneath the snow, saying it’s time for the trip westward could be seen as resignation. Why not join the rest of the dead if it’s hopeless anyway? Now I’m second-guessing myself!
I may revisit my essay and see if I can explicate some of these ideas more fully. Thanks for the dialogue, man.
this is wonderful