The Literary Analysis of James Joyce’s “The Dead”

Summary
Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta are guests at the annual Christmas party given by
his aunts, the Misses Morkan, and their niece Mary Jane. When they arrive in the
snow, the party is already under way; there is dancing, singing and, later, a fine
dinner. The atmosphere of the party and characteristics of the people involved are
conveyed through Gabriel’s perceptions when he meets Lily, his aunts, the drunken
Freddy Malins, the Nationalist Miss Molly Ivors… Gabriel is to give an after-dinner
speech and his anxiety about this punctuates the episodes of the party.
As they are preparing to leave, Gabriel sees his wife standing still, attentive to
the words of an old Irish song. He is struck by her beauty and when they depart for
the hotel, his feelings and desire gain in intensity. At the hotel room, he becomes
aware of a strangeness in her mood. She tells him about a youthful love in the country
village she came from. Michael Furey who used to sing that song had loved her and
died for her. This revelation starts self-questioning and reassessment in Gabriel as
the story ends with an epiphany.

Themes:
Paralysis
The theme of paralysis is brought out successively through the story’s stages (arrival,
party, hotel) of Gabriel’s successive failures.
- His failure as a gentleman: as he made an awkward remark to Lily, the maid,
about her forthcoming wedding, she responds bitterly: “The men that is now is only
all palaver and what they can get out of you”. Some early experience with men must
have left a bitterness. Gabriel is embarrassed and polishes his shoes longer than
necessary. To repair his mistake, he offers Lily a coin (as if money can solve all his
problems).
- His failure as an intellectual and as an Irishman: his confrontation with
Molly Ivors, an ultra-nationalist wearing a brooch with an Irish motif and his
intellectual equal, who attacks him as a “West Briton” when she rebukes him for
writing literary reviews for a pro-English newspaper, The Daily Express. Gabriel is a
University teacher who failed to produce original work and writes reviews of others’
books, paid 15 shillings and receiving books for free (the price of his betrayal).
His refusal to visit the Aran Isles, preferring to travel to Europe for his
holidays and learning other foreign languages instead of his own one, shows that he is
rejecting his Irishness and looking to Europe for his models (goloshes, fashions,
languages..) “I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!”
He even dissociates his wife Gretta from her origins in the West of Ireland
(Galway) saying, “her people are” from there (not her).
- His failure as a husband and as a man: their relationship is not as strong as it
appears. They are opposite; she would walk home happily in the snow without
galoshes, he books a hotel room. He seeks his identity in Europe; she has never
relinquished her Irish roots.
He is burning in desire for her, having planned a second honeymoon away
from the children; she is absorbed in memories of the past and does not notice him.
She had once been in love with Michael Furey who used to sing that song she heard at
the end of the party. Gabriel first accuses her of wanting to go and meet him in
Galway but she says that he was dead. He died at 17, and it is as if Gretta had also
died then, not fully alive while living with Gabriel. Gabriel materialistically asks for
his social position. Gretta’s answer (“He was in the gasworks”), shows her
indifference to wealth or social status unlike her husband.
Michael had died for her, in the winter, after coming to say goodbye when she
was about to leave for the convent and catching a death of cold. This dead young man
was more important for Gretta than Gabriel, her living husband. His failure is his
paralysis for he is unable to move her as the recollection of a ghost has.
Death: the dead are more alive than the living. See symbolism

Minor Themes:
Religion: Roman Catholicism is also a source of paralysis for Irish people
instead of being a powerful and positive influence. The Pope has forbidden women
from singing in choirs and the two aunts resent this but cannot refer to it or disparage
Catholicism in front of Mr Browne who is a protestant (“from the other persuasion”).
Drink: is literally a source of paralysis since it hampers the mind and the body
and Freddy Malins who is “screwed” symbolizes this negative influence on the Irish
who are heavy drinkers since he is unable to stop drinking even though he “takes the
pledge” every year.

Setting: Time: Christmas which is a celebration of birth, but the title is “The
Dead”. Death is pervading all over Ireland even in festive moments. The events take
place at night which is also associated with death.
Place: there are two settings, the story begins at the Morkans house then shifts to the
hotel room. The house is a setting for Gabriel’s public failure while the room which
is more intimate represents his private failure.

Characterization: James Joyce contrasts the main characters with the anti-hero
Gabriel.
Gabriel Conroy (Gabriel is the name of an archangel and Conroy means “with the
king” suggesting his pro-English attitude). His physical description with eyeglasses
and large forehead as well as “delicate restless eyes” hints at his being an intellectual.
He seems to be a successful academic, with a model family, his aunts’ favourite
nephew but the story unfolds his successive failures and paralysis (social, cultural,
intellectual, moral, professional, emotional, sexual, personal…)
His wife Gretta (with whom he shares the same initial) is totally different from him
and the last part of the story reveals their misunderstanding and lack of
communication. Gabriel refuses Ivors’ invitation without informing his wife.
His colleague Molly Ivors is a truly patriotic Irish woman who wants to revive her
native language and attends political meetings. She speaks Gaelic in the story and
accuses Gabriel of betraying his country and being a “West Briton”. She leaves the
party before the dinner, symbolically being the only fully living character while all the
others are “the dead”, alive but without a real worthwhile life.
The most important contrast is between Gabriel and Michael Furey, his wife’s first
love. Both characters are given the names of archangels which symbolize their
perception by Christian readers. Gabriel is the angel of death and punishment while
Michael is the angel of peace and mercy; Gabriel Conroy is therefore associated with a
negative connotation while Michael is more positive. Furey suggests passion and
emotional fire. Even though Michael is dead, he is more alive for Gretta than her
living husband. He has sacrificed his life for her while Gabriel is egocentric and
materialistic.
Point of view: “The Dead” is told in the 3rd person point of view but Joyce uses the
Modernist technique of “stream of consciousness” when he includes a direct
access to Gabriel’s thoughts within the narrative.
“Those who still remained in the drawing-room seemed tired of dancing and
were conversing quietly in little groups. Gabriel's warm, trembling fingers
tapped the cold pane of the window. How cool it must be outside! How
pleasant it would be to walk out alone, first along by the river and then
through the park! The snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and
forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more
pleasant it would be there than at the supper-table!”
From “how cool… ” is what Gabriel tells himself without any punctuation of reported
speech. He mentions the Wellington monument to hint at his feeling of alienation
and displacement among his people like the Duke of Wellington who was born in
Ireland but does not consider himself Irish, saying “the fact of being born in a stable
does not make a man a horse”.

Naturalism
Joyce’s short stories in Dubliners are characterized by a subtle blending of naturalism
and symbolism though the naturalistic descriptions in “The Dead” are less drab and
ugly than in the preceding stories.
Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a
young man of about forty, was of Gabriel's size and build, with very round
shoulders. His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick
hanging lobes of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse
features, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips.
His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look
sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had been
telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his
left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.

“Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black, his
silk hat on his knees. The blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be
sitting beside him, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died”.

Symbolism
The first sentence of “The Dead”, “Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off
her feet” is not to be read literally but rather metaphorically, hinting at the use of
symbols throughout the short story.
Epiphany: Besides the names of the characters, the most outstanding symbol is the
use of the technique of epiphany devised by Joyce for maintaining his invisibility and
detachment as an artist. “The artist should be like God in the universe, present
everywhere but visible nowhere”. Epiphany refers to the Christian feast celebrated on
the twelfth night after Christmas when the three wise men or Magi traveled to see the
newly-born Jesus, guided by a star “showing” them the way. It means “a showing
forth” and enables Joyce to record a gesture, a snatch of conversation, a personal
realization or emotion towards the end, leaving that moment to reverberate, without
comments, in the mind of the reader.
In “The Dead”, Joyce uses the epiphany of the snow to convey his meaning.
Snow, which is a natural element of the landscape at Christmas, allows Joyce to unite
the commonplace and the suggestive. It is a reflection of the broad theme of
Dubliners, suggesting cold and death. Snow epitomizes the overwhelming paralysis of
the Dubliners for its covers and muffles everything, “faintly falling, like the descent of
their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
Yet, if studied carefully, snow is found to be more closely associated with the
story’s protagonist Gabriel. The first reference to snow concurs with his arrival,
“scraping the snow from his goloshes”. “Is it snowing again, Mr Conroy?' asked Lily”,
connecting him alone with this freezing and stifling manifestation, while no such
reference is made to Gretta who had arrived with him. On the contrary, Gretta would
gladly “walk home in the snow if she were let.”
Snow is evoked again at the height of Gabriel’s irritation after his row with
Miss Ivors and his wife’s rebuke: “The snow would be lying on the branches of the
trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument”, linking snow
with his refusal of his Irish roots and his paralysis as an Irishman. It is mentioned
again just before making his much-dreaded speech; “In the distance lay the park,
where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a
gleaming cap of snow”; hinting at his displacement among his cultural inferiors.
When they leave his aunts’ house, Gabriel can see “a white man”, alluding to
Daniel O’Connell, “the Liberator”, who had won Catholic emancipation for Ireland
but who is covered with snow as a token of religious paralysis.
“the pleasure of the walk along the river in the snow” is closely followed by the
vivid evocation of his aunt Julia’s prospective death and his mental picture of her
funeral.
The end of the story conveys a long description of the falling of snow with
Gabriel’s epiphany and self-realization. “It had begun to snow again” is connected
with “his journey westward”, which either suggests his death like the sun that sets in
the west or his final acceptance of his Irishness by going to the West of Ireland where
the roots of Irish identity and language are preserved. “Snow was general all over
Ireland”, covering everything and uniting the living and the dead, to suggest the
general paralysis and the death of all the Irish since the elite and intelligentsia like
Gabriel are paralyzed and symbolically dead.

Other symbols recur in “The Dead”

Death: the title is a reference to either one dead, possibly Michael Furey, who spoils
Gabriel’s evening, or to many dead people; all the Dubliners and the Irish as well who
are not fully alive because of their several forms of paralysis and who are thus
symbolically dead. Awareness of death runs through all the short story which, though
set at Christmas that celebrates birth, is pervaded by death from beginning to end,
from the first word –the title “The Dead” – to the last one.
Decay is first seen in the presentation of the two old ladies who have declined
in health and social status until the prospective funeral of Aunt Julia is actually
imagined by Gabriel in every detail. A sense of death is in the memories as they evoke
dead singers and past times which were better. The omnipresence of death is
emphasized as the conversation of the guests at dinner turns to the Trappist monks
who sleep in their coffins “to remind them of their last end”.
Finally, references to death are crystallized in Gretta’s dead lover who
overpowers Gabriel, her living husband who seems dead for her.

Money: symbolizes materialism and paralysis of values. Gabriel gives a coin to Lily
instead of apologizing. 15 shillings is the price of his betrayal as a West Briton. At the
hotel when Gabriel feels ill at ease and cannot attract his wife’s attention, he refers to
the pound that he had lent to Freddy Malins and which he had given him back. He
also asks about Michael’s social status “what was he?” as soon as his wife mentions
him.

The story of Johnny: Patrick Morkan’s horse Johnny symbolizes the predicament
of Gabriel (who imitates the horse) and all the Irish in general. The horse was
conditioned to walk in circles to drive the mill. When the old man sought to break the
routine and go on a grand outing, the horse chose the statue of King Billy (William of
Orange), the symbol of British oppression, as the centre of his renewed circling
motion.
By Gabriel’s comic rendering of the story, Joyce prevents it from being an
intrusive statement of his theme, at once showing the inability of the Dubliners to
break free from their routine and paralysis, and the subservience of the Irish to the
British, represented by Gabriel himself who is actually walking round like the horse.

Conclusion:
James Joyce’s “The Dead” is the culmination of his collection Dubliners where he
diagnoses the predicament of the Irish. The ending is open to interpretation. Either
Gabriel and the Irish will remain paralyzed and dead, covered by the snow that unites
them in death, or the generous tears that fill his eyes spell his realization of his
condition and after a snowy winter, a better spring will come.