In our first week of class, we talked about the meaning of being "modern." To be modern is to find ourselves thrown into a turmoil that is simultaneously exciting and threatening. It is exciting because the dizziness comes from the drama, joy, adventure, and power promised by the arrival of modernity; however, it is at the same time threatening because our old "solid" systems of belief (regarding everything we know about ourselves and about the world) are shattered so mercilessly, as Marx described in the Communist Manifesto:"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned." This "melting" vision is later to be found in Yeats's famous poem "The Second Coming": "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."
In other words, modernity is the age of doubt. Old confidence in History and Truth evaporates. If the Truth (with a capital "T") of God, selfhood, empire is no longer valid, the exploration of "truths" (in a plural form) becomes a modernist task for writers and artists to pursue. Since the objective,rational, or transcendental "Truth" has been rejected, writers begin to focus on subjective, everyday, personal "truths." And usually these "truths" imply a critique of the traditional, the masculine, the Victorian values.
With this in mind, if James Joyce's name is synonymous with modernist literature, how does his work participate in this "de-centering" project? How does his fiction disrupt conventional expectations about self, narrative certainty, and religious faith? If all that has once been holy is now profaned, how can a modernist writer like Joyce manage to do? Can a semi-holy glimpse of redemption be possible for Joyce in this disenchanted modern world which is irreversibly secular?
You can link the aforementioned questions to a detailed consideration of Gabriel in "The Dead." For example, how does Garbriel's "certainty" crumble after several incidents happened in the story? Examine those incidents and anaylze Gabriel's confrontations with different female characters. In what way do these confrontations bring about Gabriel's awareness of his limitations as a lover and a human being?
Make your answer into a 350-400-word essay.
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“The dead” is written realistically about the custom of Irish people and shows the death coexists with life. This story isn’t talking about death straightly but with some equivocal terms. For example, “Galway”,” Connacht “and “The Lass of Aughrim” are intent to “west”. West is indicated to death. In addition, “Romeo and Juliet”, and” shadow” also mean the dead.Gabriel, a professor, is a self-important, self-confidence and sick of his own country people. By the Misses Morkan’s annual banquet, he expresses the sentiment of life without spirit. In the story, Garbriel has confrontations with several female characters; however, the confrontation with his wife, Gretta, shakes him mostly. When Gretta tells a story which is the reason why the song The Lass of Aughrim makes her cry. The story is about a guy, who she knew in Galway, they had innocent affection at that time. However, he died for illness when he was seventeen. For Gabriel, he envies and feels upset for the truth of crying. At that time, he thinks he loses to the dead. Before, Garbriel thinks that his life with Gretta is satisfactory and he also thinks that he’s the only love for Gretta. However, the dead breaks his egoism. He understands that it’s illusion that the dead is worthless compared to the alive. Due to dead, there is no immortal thing in the world. However, the dead, Michael, his body is gone; his spirit is in Gretta’s mind in depth. It makes him to be aware of life and death. The snow presents the sense of identity of him. Snow thaws to become water in the world just like life to death. Oh the other hand, death is part of life and coexists with life in the world. To sum up, if life without passion, it’s no different from dead. Similarly, with passion, the dead is like alive such as the dead, Michael, who has the passion love to Gretta and makes his spirit be immortal.
At the beginning of the plot, that everyone greets to Gabriel reveals Gabriel’s characteristics as high self-esteem and self-assurance. However, there are three confrontations deflate Gabriel’s ego gradually. First of all, Lily is the first female to challenge Gabriel’s dignity. Gabriel asked about Lily’s marriage, but Lily’s response downgraded masculinity via ironic phrases. Because of the conversation, it is the first time that Gabriel noticed the conflict with his own identity. Before the confrontation, Gabriel often holds his thoughts largely to himself and never doubts himself.
After that, the second incident is from Miss Ivors’ rebuke. During the square dance, Miss Ivors’ discussed about “Daily Express” and referred Gabriel as “West Briton”. It is influential to Gabriel’s self-centeredness and self-conscious. On the other side, even Gabriel debated with others, but that content of debate implied that Gabriel started to feel insecure about his identity.
Finally, at the end of the party, Gabriel realized his wife’s love story because of the song “The lass of Aughrim”. Gabriel’s certainty definitely crumbled from the “truth”. His wife explained that her former lover died because of her leaving. Gabriel introspected that he has never loved his wife just like her previous lover-Michael Furey did. Before the moment, Gabriel never concerns others. Until his wife’s sharing, he started to consider the world around him.
At the end of the story, Gabriel contemplated the snow out of the window. The snow implied “the dead”. In western culture, snow is also a kind of symbol as pall or shroud. In fact, “the dead” was also indicated at the beginning of the story. The name of “Lily” is a kind of flower which often used in funeral ceremony. Moreover, Gretta’s hometown is in the west of Ireland. “West” represented heaven or paradise which means “the dead”.
“The dead” is the final story of Dubliners. James Joyce depicted the conflict between feminism and masculinity. He also used “the dead” to enlarge the idea of modernism to renew rooted thoughts from people. Besides, his work associated the real world via writing subtle description about “the dead”. No wonder it’s a masterpiece until now.
At the very beginning, Gabriel was a confident man, upper middle class, fair appearance and beloved by his relatives. However, his certainty smashed within a series of events. Then, these confrontations trigger his reflection, made him to aware and to identify himself again.
The first one who made him encountered embarrass is the housemaid, Lily. He was tried to teasing her, spoke to her in a friendly tone, and asked her about her wedding. However, Lily gave him a bitter answer and made him embarrassed. In this conversation, we can figure out that Gabriel was full of confidence, he might want to make fun of Lily, yet she fought back and then Gabriel left without looking at her.
The next conflict happened in the conversation with Gabriel and his colleague, Miss Ivors, a supporter of Irish independence. She questioned Gabriel why he wrote articles for The Daily Express, and said that he was a West Briton. Gabriel could not fight back because they were colleagues. He could only maintain his smile and gently response. Here, we can see that Gabriel’s certainty smashed again. In these paragraphs, we can also figure out James Joyce’s politic position. Then, Miss Ivors asked him to go to Aran Isles for vacation, he refused. She then questioned him, and he finally lost his temper and faced the question. From these conversations, we know that Gabriel was a depressed man, although he looks happy, he has some problem with self identity.
The last confrontation came from his wife, Gretta. In the previous paragraph, we know that their families are not of equal standing. The event began with a song, “The Lass of Aughrim”. He found that the secret of his wife’s first lover, a young man who died for her. He realized that there was a chapter of his wife’s life that he didn’t take part. The young man, Michael, was a symbol of passion, which Gabriel did not have. That made him to think of his life, his identity, and the death that he may encounter.
Gabriel, a man from a well-being family, is an egoist, and arrogant person. Such traits of his can be found from various of his behaviors; take one incident for example, he is undecided whether to cite the lines by Robert Browning in his speech for he thinks that others may not understand the poem, and he thinks other people live in a different culture than his, he deems himself superior and more intelligent than them. However, interestingly, this character from time to time blushes and feels embarrassed throughout the story, and is challenged by an array of different female characters. These embarrassments finally bring him to another level of himself and his epiphany occurs in the end.
Gabriel’s first time blushing his face takes place at the very beginning of the story. Upon his arrival at the he party, he tries to be witty with words to the girl servant Lily, joking about attending her wedding soon after knowing she has quit school. To his surprise, this young girl Lily talks back to him with great bitterness, commenting that men are all palaver. Gabriel’s face colors, and walks away with his abashment.
The second encounter is the nationalist woman, Miss Ivors. Miss Ivors challenges him bluntly and gives her remark on his work straight-up, referring the newspaper he writes as a “rag”. Later when they are discussing about a destination for excursion they end up in a fierce debate. Gabriel again is disputed.
The last and the most important bring-down that eventually leads Gabriel to his realization is the confrontation from his wife-Gretta. Memories of Gretta with a young past lover are triggered by the melodies of the song called “The Lass of Aughrim”. When she is drowned in the memories with Michael Furey, Gabriel suddenly spots his wife’s transcendental beauty and is aroused by the scene. He wants his wife to come to him yet only to discover the past he does not know in the past.
Staring at the snow, Gabriel pictures many scenes in his mind and feels his identity fading out, comes to the new sense of the world, let go of his egoism and accepts life, including death in a larger vision.
In “The Dead”, James joyce threw the protagonist Gabriel into disturbance. The interior attacks and exterior factors disrupted Gabriel’s old solid belief and led him into an epiphany about his ego and his relationship to the world. It’s a breakthrough of his new identity through tradition. That’s how it can be modernist literature.
From a series of interior attacks of the encounters with the three female characters, we can see the contemplation of Gabriel’s mind clearly. Before the confrontation of Lily, Gabriel was filled with arrogant confidence and masculinity. He regarded himself as a high-educated man that everyone was beneath him. To his surprise, he felt embarrassed by the bitter retort of Lily. As a consequence, he began to feel diffident and anxious inside his mind. Then, in the conversation with Miss Ivors, he tried to be calm and answered in a friendly way. However, he was always self-centered and nervous of the queries by Miss Ivors. Thus, he got a stronger feeling of insecure and risky about his identity. The last setback was confronting to his wife, Gretta. Gabriel has never concerned about his wife. What he really cared is his lust for Gretta. After hearing the story, his egoism dissolved. It was the first time that he felt the existence of others. He saw his wife, not the appearance or figure, but her inside world. He saw the eyes of the boy who died for Gretta, and that was love, a feeling he never have had.
At the same time, we could find the changing thorough the exterior factors which can be seen as death and snow. In “The Dead”, death is frequently mentioned. No matter in the physical death of human beings, the fade of ages, the picture of the scene in “Romeo and Juilet” or the western place “Galway”, all above indicated the death of tradition. Then the emergence of the snow blended Gabriel’s own identity with the solid world. In a way “The snow was general all over Ireland” was like the renewal of the consciousness to his country. He even decided to set out his journey westward. In addition, we can see the spiritual awakening through the last sentence “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” Here, Gabriel’s egoism was melting, he no longer considered himself important. The snow made him perceive a new vision of self and the world.
James Joyce is considered a modern writer. He always makes readers to reconsider self value and the contemporary society. In “The Dead”, James Joyce didn’t mention “what is dead”, instead, we see a bustling dance party at the beginning of the story. Deaths actually exist in many place of the story; however, those are merely the dead of physiological figures and real bodies, and James Joyce didn’t put much description on them. The reader will keep finding out which dead is really matter. Finally, through the protagonist Gabriel, with the third person limited point of view, we can feel that something is changing and disintegrating in Gabriel’s mind. Only Gabriel’s thoughts had given in the story, but that’s enough for us to realize what James Joyce tried to convey. In the end, Gabriel’s soul and mind, which consider himself as the center of the world, are dead. His world which he used to live and believe in is dead. Dead in the story not only means not exist anymore. It means the rebirth of the soul and to rebuild the world. When we are into Gabriel’s mind, we can see that he consider himself the most elevated and people around him are all inferior to him, but after facing many frustration with different character, like Lily, Miss Ivors, and finally his wife. James Joyce uses this character to achieve the project of de-centering. Through the stream of consciousness and third person point of view, we know that Gabriel’s self identity is gradually being destructed. Then in the end the story comes to Gabriel’s epiphany, we are also led to a different world. He no longer thinks about himself. In this modern world, we put too much attention and importance on ourselves and make us blind. We human beings consider ourselves the center and leader of the world. We often have ore egoism and take it for granted. However, our self identity is actually fragile, just like Gabriel. This kind of self value, which we believe is the most holy and important, even has less strength than the snow. In “The Dead”, snow’s melting symbolizes the break down of Gabriel’s ego and his identity. Also, snow’s tranquility forms a contrast of our ignorance.
In James Joyce’s work, we can find a combination of modern and conservative elements in the story that make people confuse about the real nature of them. In “the dead” the male character Gabriel is the image of everyman, who represents the whole society shaped by history. Gabriel is intellectual, in the middle class, and highly self-contented with himself. He decides that he is superior to those people who are not at the same standard as he is, and in order not to highlight his good education, he chooses to quote the popular writer’s poetry over Robert Browning’s on his speech, for fear that they can’t be able to understand. However, his confidence goes down when he met the girl Lily. He tries to tease her with a joke that he’ll be going to her wedding with her young man someday, but instead he gets her sudden retort. Lily answers back that the way he talks is like all other men, and they just want something from women. After that he feels the awkwardness, he changes the focus on a coin that he wants to give her and then is in a rush to go away. Lily is the first person Gabriel confronts in the party that makes him reduces the pride and doubts his masculine power to control things. In the middle of the party, Gabriel has a dancing moment with Miss Ivors, a talkative, sharp woman, who is sensitive to politics. She questions him about working for the pro UK newspaper and his feeling about his own country, and her words make Gabriel aware of what he used to be easy and comfortable with. He is paid by the pro UK newspaper, he goes for a cycling tour to other countries, but he knows that doesn’t mean he is a West Briton. He can’t explain and risk fighting back with the lady when she has good education as well, so he tries to keep smiling at her. The female character brings about the nation identifying issue and makes Gabriel’s own values even more uncertain. In the end of “the dead”, a song reminds the memory of his wife, who later reveals a story that when she was young, she had a relationship with a boy who became sick and died for her. After a while Gabriel turns from shocked to generous, understanding that it is probably love, which he never feels in his life. He finds himself his real feeling and identity in the epiphany, and realizes that people concentrate on working, social contacting, and nobody values love or be aware of or death everywhere, he knows it’s time to start living now.
Cindy 49602040 said...
James Joyce disrupts conventional expectations by describing how protagonist Gabriel in “ The Dead” gains epiphany in the end of the story. A semi-holy glimpse of redemption can be possible and it can be contrasted with the plot that Gabriel finally not only sees his own identity but true essence of his own life and human life.
Referred to James Joyce ‘s disturbance of religious faith, he describes people were surprised at Julia’s good voice and Aunt Kate felt indignant for sexual discrimination turning out the woman out of the choirs. We can see Gabriel’s confrontations with three different female characters:Lily, Miss Ivors, and Gretta. Lily, who is a servant of Gabriel’s aunts. Gabriel asked Lily about her love story clumsily; then, he tipped for protecting himself and keeping distance from people after he was retorted by Lily. It had degraded his masculine because he can not endure back answers. He felt embarrassed and anxious. Miss Ivors irritates him by calling him West Briton. Finally, he is too anxious to reply what Miss Ivors asked ; as a result, he retorted : “I am sick of my own country, sick of it!” He felt confused to his identity; he can not forget the conversation with her from then on. The most important role that changes Gabriel most is his wife, Gretta. The turning point is Gabriel learned that Gretta was reminded of her first love. After she heard The Lass of Aughrim ,the song that Mr Bartell D’Arcy sang, she was surrounded by the past memories with Michael Furey. When Gabriel found that Gretta was distracted by unknown reasons, he feels anxious and becomes diffident even if he is always proud of his achievement. However, when he found the boy is dead, his jealousy turned to humiliation. He did not start to think and realize the truth of love until this moment. As he is so self-centered, he is always indifferent to people. He thinks that he is superior than others; nevertheless, he did not realize true love will be immortal since people will keep it in mind forever. There is another point interesting that the speech Gabriel gave at dinner” I will not linger on the past, I will not let any gloomy moralizing intrude upon us here to-night…” , but Gretta still cared the boy dying for her a lot in reality. It is very ironic.
Just as the title “ The Dead” , there are several symbols in it. A picture of the balcony scene Romeo and Juliet , a shadow on his face, “Galway”, A ballad named “The Lass of Aughrim” all relates to “west”. Those things all implies death, the inevitable thing creatures have.
Gabriel is a seemingly noble, intelligent and confident gentleman who never regards himself with any shortcomings. However, after encounters three incidents during the process of attending his aunts’ annual dinner party, he gets the chance to introspect himself as a human and a lover, and finally, he is able to reach the sense of epiphany.
The first incident that he encounters is the awkward and unpleasant conversation between him and the servant girl, Lily. After a short greeting, Gabriel begins to jest with Lily about her love life which irritates her and forces her to retort impolitely. Gabriel, who is just like his aunts, detests back answers and is annoyed by Lily’s sudden retort, but he remains calm and gives Lily a coin in order to subside the tension between them. In this first encounter, we can see that Gabriel is anxious about his confrontation with Lily, however he sees himself superior than her therefore he can easily smoothes this thing out with his power(money). Because Lily belongs to a lower class than Gabriel, so this confrontation does not make Gabriel questioning himself(though it does “cast a gloom over him”), instead, it makes Gabriel wonder whether others are as erudite or knowledgeable as he is in order to understand him.
The second incident that Gabriel encounters is the conflict between him and Miss Ivors. Miss Ivors, who is a nationalist, openly questioning Gabriel about his political position and calls him a West Briton because he writes a literary column for a conservative newspaper, and her further heckling Gabriel for not choosing his own country to travel not only makes he loses his temper in public but also damages his self-esteem as a reputable and dignified man. After the confrontation with Miss Ivors, Gabriel becomes absent minded the whole night. He cares more deeply about Miss Ivors’s accusation than Lily’s because she belongs to his class and is also an
educated person, and her words really shatter his faith in himself.
The third incident is the one that really gets Gabriel to rethink about his life and his value as a human. Gabriel notices that his wife, Gretta, begins to act weird after hearing the song “The Lass of Aughrim”, and this arouses his lust for her because he wants “to be master of her strange mood”. However, after Gretta revealing the shocking secret about a boy, Michael Furey, who died for her years ago, Gabriel is crashed. Even though he is jealous of Michael and disdains him as a “delicate” person at first, nevertheless, after hearing the whole story, his sense of inferiority appears. He realizes that he never experiences the kind of love that Michal had for Gretta that makes he discovers his limitation as a lover, and the three confrontations with three different women during the night ultimately makes he discovers his limitation as a human and force him to readjust his callous view toward the world and himself.
In the beginning of the annual party, Gabriel is a very self-centered and confident person. He feels that he can control everything, no matter in his speech or how to interact with his aunts and friends. Therefore he does not expect that his confidence will be challenged. However, he does not realize that his life is passionless and meaningless until the three incidents happen. And by those incidents, he starts to see clearly about the annual party and his life are just like the horse which always circles around the hall in the story told by himself; the repeated events happen every year: he gives a speech, the repeated procedure, and Freedy Malins arrives drunk and so on. And his speech also reveals his confusions about past and present.
The first incident happens in the beginning of the party, Gabriel asks Lily about her schooling and jokes about her love life, no sooner had Gabriel felt embarrassing and made a mistake that he got the retort of Lily, without any explanation to Lily, Gabriel quickly ends the conversation by giving Lily some gratuity, let his money speak for him. Though the conversation between them makes Gabriel feel insecure about his upcoming speech, but in this moment, I think he still believes the embarrassing situation between him and Lily is caused by his superior education.
The second incident happens during the dance, Gabriel is questioned by Miss Ivors about his political inclination, but Gabriel does not know how to answer appropriately. This conversation makes him conscious that whether he is a nationalist or not, since under his agitation, Gabriel blurts out that he is sick of his own country.
The last incident transforms Gabriel the most, which happens with his wife- Gretta. At first Gabriel wants to take control of her, but it is not about love, it is about his carnal desire. However, after hearing about Gretta’s first love, promptly he has the insight into live, love even how to be a human. He realizes that actually he does not know what is love, passion or the essence of life, he finds out actually he is just like a “pennyboy for her aunts, orating to vulgarians, and idealizing his own clownish lusts.” Compared his life with Michael Furey’s, his life is passionless and vapidly, Furey did have a more substantial life than he has. Finally, Gabriel recognizes that life is short, and up to now, the life he has is just a numb one, he begins to contemplate his attitude toward life and love, and he is no longer an egocentric person.
Ivy 49602038
“The Dead” depicts the main character, Gabriel’s psychological insights from egoism to self-awareness. At the beginning of the story, Gabriel, came from the middle class, participated in a party. At first, he was struck back from a female, Lily, with a bitter response. The reply weakened Gabriel’s masculine dignity. Next, Gabriel was invited to give a speech after dinner. He was nervous because he considered whether it is appropriate to quote some words from Robert Browning to suit his status. Also, he thought that his speech may be too lofty to his audience. It can reveal that Gabriel was proud of himself and regarded himself as a superior class. In other words, he is an arrogant person.
Third, when Gabriel chatted with Miss Ivors, he was blamed for having no loyalty to Ireland. The accuse aroused Gabriel’s consciousness and propelled the proceeding awareness. And the most important part and also the turning point of Gabriel’s change is his wife, Gretta. When Gabriel learned that his wife, Gretta, still remembered a lover in her girlhood. He was mad. But after Gretta explained that her former lover died because of her leaving. Gabriel had an epiphany at the moment. He feels insignificant in her life; a man died for her. Gabriel had a new sense toward the world, including life and death. He felt the power of the mortality on all human beings. At the end of the story, ’’Gabriel’s soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling.” He felt himself becoming one of the dead. At then, he escaped from his egoism and his pride. As the falling of the snow, and then thaws to water, it represents life and death. Gabriel had accepted death as a process of all beings and had a new vision of identity in the world. Similarly, he realized the separation of the death is a part of life and the mortality for all beings is natural and original.
The story takes place at a party of Julia and Kate Morgan who are aunts of Gabriel Conroy. Being a teacher and a literary reviewer, Gabriel is going to have a speech in the party, but before giving it, Gabriel “was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers,” and “the indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his.” He attends the party but with an attitude of disdain and keeps himself as the center. However, after encountering three incidents during the party, Gabriel realizes his limitation as a lover and a human being.
Gabriel’s first frustration happens when he tries to talk to the servant girl, Lily, with some clever words. Joking to Lily about attending to her wedding after she has dropped school, Gabriel is astonished at Lily’s response. After listening to the answer with great bitterness that men now are only all palaver, Gabriel feels that he has made a mistake and leaves with embarrassment. Although Gabriel is shamed, this incident seems to not really attack him.
The second person Gabriel encounters is Miss Ivors, a nationalist, who playfully rebukes Gabriel for writing for The Daily Express to express his political position on England, and calls him a “West Briton.” Miss Ivors then disputes for Gabriel not choosing his own country to travel. This incident hurts Gabriel’s self-esteem, because after all, he is an educated and reputable person in front of everyone.
Near the end of the party, Gabriel sees his wife, Gretta, concentrating on listening to a song called “The Lass of Aughrim” which is sang by Mr. D’Arcy. Gretta tells Gabriel that many years ago she knew a young boy called Michael Furey. Furey died after standing in the rain outside Gretta’s window because Gretta is going to leave Galway for Dublin. “I think he died for me,” Gretta says. Knowing the story, Gabriel realizes that maybe he never loves his wife deeply as Furey did. What Gretta says strikes Gabriel the most and forces him to rethink himself.
The confrontations with Lily, Miss Ivors and Gretta at the party and the snow in the end give Gabriel a new sense of identity with the world and of the breakdown of his egoism.
The protagonist, Gabriel, in “The Dead”, is an arrogant and ego man and who sees himself higher than others. For example, Gabriel is undecided about the lines from Robert Browning because he fears that other people on the party will be above the heads of his hearers. He thinks that others are inferior and they are not as smart as him. However, in the party, Gabriel encounters the embarrassments for the reasons that he is disputing by the female roles. The embarrassments are not leading him to destruction but guiding him to another level of spirit and that is epiphany. That is how “The Dead” can be modernist literature.
In the story, Gabriel has three confrontations of three women. The first one is Lily, the caretaker’s daughter. Gabriel tries to tease Lily by saying that they will be going to her wedding very soon. Gabriel always sees himself as a confident and superior man. He cannot imagine that Lily will retort. As a result, when Lily retorts, Gabriel blushes and feels anxious. The second one is the encounter of Miss Ivors. Gabriel colours again for the following reasons. First, Miss Ivors calls Gabriel “West Briton” because he writes articles to “The Daily Express”. Second, Miss Ivors asks he that why he would rather travel other countries instead of his own country. After encountering of Miss Ivors, he becomes absent minded and is frustrated. The third one is his wife, Gretta. After hearing the song “The Lass of Aughrim”, she seems to be abstracted. Therefore, Gabriel asks Gretta the reason why she looks so weird. When Gretta tells the shocking secret about the boy, at first, Gabriel feels envy and angry; however, in the end, the confession of Gretta actually makes Gabriel think deeply about his identity and lets him understand the true meaning of love. The three confrontations let Gabriel get the epiphany and rethink about himself. In the end of the story, the snow represents his new sense of identity with the world and the breakdown of his egoism in “his soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe….”
In “The Dead”, James Joyce tried to describe a man’s epiphany through some incidents he encountered in an annual dance. At first, the main character, Gabriel, represented a self-centered and egoistic person. His family background and superior education made him satisfy with his life. He also looked down on other people, and he thought that “he would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand”. However, three incidents happened to him leaded a dramatic change in his mind.
In the beginning of the text, he met the caretaker’s daughter, Lily. The conversation between them started with Gabriel condescended to her, but ended by her retort. He felt embarrassed and discomposed with her word, so he was kind of running away from this situation. But he soon turned to his speech and tried to recover his mood. Then he talked with Miss Ivors, his old friend and who were an Irish nationalist, during the dance. She seems to have problems with his politic position and national identity for he wrote a column in The daily Express. Besides, she asked some questions about his works and the place he will visit. These questions made him felt embarrassed and than annoyed. In the end of the conversation, he was nervous and said that he was sick of his own country. Obviously he couldn’t stand her bitter questions. Again he run away from her words by avoiding her eyes and seeing her facial expression.
When Gabriel and his wife were to leave, they hear a song, The Lass of Aughrim, which made her wife distracted and burst into tears. His wife than told him a story of her memory about a young boy who used to sing this song but died after she left him. After hearing the story, Gabriel started to think of their marriage and the dead lover. He finally found out “his own identity was fading out into a gray impalpable world”. He rethought his life and he noticed the snow out of the window.
In “The Dead,” we could see that at the beginning Gabriel felt good about himself because he led a so called successful life which people praised. However, in the end of the story Gabriel found that some things in his own world had been different which he didn’t recognize before.
There’re several female characters that reflected and inspired Gabriel himself to realize something which he hid or disguised as if he didn’t know. First, the caretaker’s daughter, Lily, had her own thought. When Gabriel tried to talk to her with some questions like school matter and marriage, she answered him directly what she thought which made Gabriel feel embarrassed. Here Gabriel faced the emotion that his care which is out of good will was refused. Miss Ivors through the conversation and series of questions with Gabriel discovered the real Gabriel. For Gabriel, being a columnist was his job and he didn’t find anything wrong. As people of one nation, Miss Ivors cares about everything of the nation and politics which Gabriel seems not. After the exploration by Miss Ivors, he’s confused and scared. He tried to convince himself that he wrote the column for literature but not politics which she focused on. Gabriel doubted what he had been done is right or wrong or why not he contributes to his nation. The doubt was planted for Gabriel’s latter collapse. The most important one is Gabriel’s wife, Gretta. From the complaining of Gretta, we could see Gabriel tried to control everything like what his wife wore. In the party Gabriel found his wife was always alone and that made Gabriel think she’s extremely sexy. Gabriel found who his wife Gretta really loved is another man who’s been dead long time ago, and the man still lived in her heart. Gabriel can’t accept the truth which crashes his confidence on the thought that her wife only loved him. His world collapsed because as if everything he’s been used is a lie that he live in it and ever enjoyed. He built the lie and was not willing to accept the truth that the outer world has been changed.
We know many stories of Joyce are built around what he called an “epiphany,” a dramatic but fleeting moment of revelation about the self or the world, and “The Dead” is also the same. At the first of this story, we can see how arrogant Gabriel is. He thinks he is superior to anyone, when he prepares his speech outside the dining room door, he can not decide about the lines from Robert Browning or from Shakespeare, cause he considers that other people haven’t heard about Robert Browning. However, a girl whose name is Lily frustrates him very soon, she says, “the man that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” This sentence makes Gabriel feel that he makes a mistake and he gives Lily a coin as Christmas gift to cover his embarrassed. Then, the conversation between Miss Ivors and him defeats him, too. In the end, the “epiphany” shows up. When Gabriel’s wife cries for her lover, Gabriel is very angry about that, but when he knows that her lover is dead, he is open and clear. He begins to think about other people not just himself, and it snows outside that represents Gabriel’s new sense of identity with the world, of the broken of his egoism.
After reading "The Dead" was written by James Joyce, he redefined the selfhood and the protagonist would have the epiphany in that story. In "The Dead," at the beginning of the story, Garbriel considered that he is humorous, witty and noble than other people. He satisfied with his life, and only one he really care is himself. First, When he mocked lily, and lily's feedback made him feel shame on his unrespected words.Second, when he comfronted Miss Ivors, he noticed that he is disingenuous to his own country, and his life seems to be wonderful. Besides, he alse he is educated and he was afraid of being insulted if he declaimed a poem that every body didn't know. Here reveals his egotism. However, when they were going to leave, Grabriel had sexual desire to Gretta. But Gratta lost her thought, her mind went back to her past. At the final part of that story, Grabirel suddenly realized that although his wife got married with him. He found out that they were acturally estranged at that moment. To be her lover, compared with Michael, he is not impotant to Gretta anymore. He rediscovered himself and accept the death. His holy tears filled his eyes, and he felt his soul was rescued at that moment. he understood that the ture meaning of immortal love is like the young boy who buried in the past but his love was remained in Gretta's heart forever.The final sentance reveals that Grabriel was dissolving in that snow, and his soul with snow falling faintly through the unervise. " Like the descent of their last end, upon the living and the dead." It is the best ending for Grabriel.
In the story of “The Dead”, Garbriel's certainty crumbles after three accidents happened in an annual party: Lily’s retort, an argument with Miss Ivors, and the misunderstanding of his wife’s thought.
According to the details in this story, Garbriel was an egoist at begining. Because Garbriel is a high-educated man and is a college teacher, he thinks he is superior to most people in this party. For example, when he glanced his outline of speech, he was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for fearing they are too hard to understand for his audience. Therefore, he thought the works of Shakespeare or Thomas Moor may more familiar to other people. However, Garbriel got frustration from three women.
First, Garbriel somehow offended Lily and felt embarrassed. Garbriel asked Lily’s life and joked about lily’s wedding in the future. Therefore, Lily gave him a bitter and sudden retort- the Men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you. Garbriel felt unhappy and surprised by Lily’s strong resentment; he couldn’t understand young girl’s thought.
Second, Miss Ivors found Garbriel wrote some articles for The Daily Express and said Garbriel was a “West Briton” in this party. Miss Ivors loved her country very much and angered for Garbriel’s unconcern of Ireland. Garbriel finally couldn’t bear Miss Ivors’ comment on him and proclaimed that he was sick of his country. Garbriel was not so gentle when he talked to Ivors at the beginning of their argument. On the contrast, He became to be in a bad temper.
Finally, when Garbriel left the party, he found out his wife had some thought in mind, and he thought that maybe her wife wanted to have sex with him, just like what he wanted at that time. However, his wife thought of a boy called Michael Furey in Galway and started to cry. Garbriel’s lust turned into anger. He finally knew that Michael Furey died for years and had a huge passion to Garbriel’s wife; Garbriel found that he never had any passion to anyone or anything but just satisfied with his own life. In the end of the story, Garbriel got an epiphany that the living, the dead, and his own identity would all fade out into the world which was dissolving and dwindling.
Winnie 49602033
In the whole story, the main idea that James Joyce dealt with was one person’s epiphany. Compared with an egoist, Gabriel started to think that he was nothing in the extensive world. Besides, Gabriel’s epiphany brought other different images to three things.
First, one of the themes is “the dead”. In the story, it is easy to know that the dead means Gretta’s former love, Michael Furey. With Gabriel’s epiphany, the dead also could be referred to Gabriel’s big ego. “She had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life.” (p.1298)
Second, Miss Ivors talked about “west” when Gabriel danced with her in the party. “West”, even “Ireland” was a word that Gabriel didn’t want to mention. Oppositely, he wanted to visit other European countries and more European languages. “Irish is not my language.” “O, to tell you truth, retorted Gabriel suddenly, I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!” (p. 2180) It appears that “west” to Gabriel is a backward and means “death”. Compared with Gabriel, “west” represented “passion” and “heaven” to Miss Ivors. “West” also represented the salvation that caused Gabriel decided to visit westward in the end of story.
Third, “Snow” is an important image in the end of the story. “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”(P.1914) Snow played an important role to link “the living” with “the dead.” Finally, “snow was general all over Ireland.” (1914) it seemed to that all living was dead, but it appeared more that a sheet of snow implied power of rebirth.
In the story, James Joyce gave us a voice of ambivalence. All things were not as true as its on the surface. In most of time, there was real truth inside. The end of story was that Gabriel was destroyed and his spirit was dead, but the reality was that he took this experience and became a new person.
Modernity is the age of doubt. In general, people always think self-image is important; however, in James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Garbriel’s “certainty” crumbles after finding he is paralyzed by his self-consciousness. Garbriel is so-called elite, and what he cares is himself until three incidents happened. The first incident is his impolite conversation with the servant, Lily. He teases Lily about her love life. Unexpectedly, Lily retorts that “the men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” Gabriel feels embarrassed and fees Lily to smooth the tension. Here he thinks his money is the power to silence Lily. Although he knows he has made a mistake, he dose not learn any lesson from the first incident because he looks down upon Lily’s lower class. The second incident is his conflict with Miss Ivors. Miss Ivors, a nationalist, disapproves Gabriel’s work for the British. Gabriel is shocked because he is satisfied with his job. But he finally admits that he is sick of his country, Ireland, after Miss Ivors questioning his loyalty to Ireland. Gabriel sees a sour expression on Miss Ivors’s face and fells into a state of profound melancholy because Miss Ivors is well-educated and he knows she is right. The second incident upsets Gabriel’s faith about the status quo. The third incident about his wife is the key to causing Gabriel’s awareness of his limitation as a lover and a human being. Gabriel loves his wife, Gretta, with lust. At first, he is jealous after hearing the love story of Gretta and Michael. Later, as he knows Michael is died for Gretta, he begins to contemplate his love to Gretta and realizes that he has never loved his wife as Michael did. It is clear that Gretta’s love for Michael has never died. Here expresses the power of memory and memories are more alive than the present. With self-doubt, Gabriel finds something wrong with him. He has no passion with his job, family and life like the dead because he has taken the status quo for granted. In the end, the falling snow represents Gabriel’s acceptance of death as a part of life. “Be dead, and to rise from the dead.”
49502027 Nana
Disillusions are the normality in modernist literature. In the first novel we read, The Dead, James Joyce creates a protagonist, Gabriel, to demonstrate the desolation of being in the modern world and the feebleness of certainty. In order to illustrate this disillusion, there are several contraries in the story including masculine and feminine, falsehood and truth, self-centered and de-centered, the living and the dead.
Gabriel is depicted as a self-satisfied, educated, and egoistic male character. When the party starts, Gabriel has a monologue presented in a stream of consciousness writing that he is worrying about the other guests may not be educated enough to understand the quotation from Robert Browning in his speech. Gabriel is a man who contents with himself, and this satisfaction is merely out of his ignorance.
Earlier when he just arrived at the party, Gabriel has a frustration of teasing the young maid Lily. He blushed immediately at the utterance of the blunt retort of Lily, which shows that he didn’t expect this respond. He is blushed for he cares his reputation so much that he realizes he may have said something improper and wants to make up by giving Lily some money in hope to show his generosity. What Gabriel has in mind is always not coincide with the real world, so he will face more frustrations in the following part.
Later, the folks on the party are arranged for square dance and Gabriel is challenged by his dance partner Miss Ivors. Miss Ivors is an outspoken and patriotic young lady, and she uncovers the fact that Gabriel writes for British newspaper and accuses him as a “West Briton.” Gabriel’s masculinity is crushed again. Because he is not really aware of the world around him, he thought he is just for the pay and it’s not enough to accuse him as a “West Briton.” This unawareness is a proof of living like a dead one.
In order to know how to live, people should know how to die. So “The Dead” gave its name. Gabriel goes through the de-centering progress with the incidents with Lily, Miss Ivors, and his wife Gretta. Gabriel only thinks of his need and lust, and does not notice the sorrow Gretta is immersed in at all. However, knowing someone had died for her, Gabriel’s ego is melting. The dying Aunt Julia has some work in Gabriel’s de-centering progress, too. He realizes that she will be soon withered away. After all that he has been through at that night, Gabriel could not hold his certainty and confidence any more. When he knows his limitation, he will be able to link himself with the other people, even the dead, and to realize what is real.
In “The Dead,” the protagonist, Gabriel, is a man who lives in a family of upper middle class. Good education as well as smooth and satisfactory life makes him a person self-satisfied, egotistic and even arrogant. However, in the annual party, he can’t predict others’ feelings and he encounters three incidents that totally reverse his way of seeing the world.
The first incident is his confrontation with the servant girl, Lily. He sees Lily as an uneducated and lower class than he, so he thinks that he can talk to her with less respect and less manner (he teases her love life). And it is his solid and arrogant mind that makes him fail to understand her feeling and to react to her back answer properly. The confrontation with Lily does arouse the disturbance in his mind but still can’t surpass his ego. Instead of apologizing or introspecting, he attempts to cover up his fault and to conciliate Lily by giving her some coins. And this behavior just reveals his ignorance and arrogance that he thinks money is powerful than the truth and dignity for “the uneducated, lower class.” Although Lily’s retort makes him annoyed, he doesn’t question himself from this incident because of his superior status.
The confrontation with Miss Ivors makes a bigger challenge on his confidence and certainty. That’s because Miss Ivors’ status is of his class and she questions him sharply and openly at his political position and calls him “West Briton,” which powerfully damages his self-esteem. He knows that Miss Ivors is also an educated person, and his incapability to react against her questions makes him diffident and uncertain about himself. In order to cover up his diffidence and to uphold his self-esteem, he finally loses his temper and shouts back that he is sick of his country in public, and this even damages his image seriously. He becomes distraught and absent-minded. The conflict with Miss Ivors has cast a big damage on Gabriel’s self-certainty.
The last confrontation with his wife, Gretta, becomes the last straw that crashes and dissolves his solid ego. After his lust love to Gretta was thwarted by her love memory with her first love, Michael, Gabriel flies into rage out of humiliation. He always wants to predominate, to be more superior to others so that he can justify and uphold his majesty and self pride. So instead of noticing and tolerating Gretta’s sad mind, he continues to ridicule her love with Michael sarcastically. However, beyond his expectation, Michael is dead. How and what can he compete and argue with a dead person? And even to his surprise, Michael was dead for a simple but profound reason─ he died because of sickness but died for Gretta─ so simple and so profound that can easily crash Gabriel’s confidence, identity, and his all certainties about himself and the world. He realized that how shallow his love for his wife and his perceiving with people and the world are. As a lover for so many years, he even couldn’t love as passionately and unselfishly as a dead person. And what he used to believe before seems all unreal at all. True and false, high class and low class, the living and the dead…all definitions and demarcation lines in his belief seem to become blurred. And he starts to rethink about his value of being a human.
Gabriel Conroy, on a night he and his wife attend a party given by his two aunts. Conroy is presented as an awkward, condescending, and self-centered man when he engages in the holiday party, but he later has a moment of self-realization. At first, when Gabriel tries to engage in small talk with Lily, the housekeeper. He asks whether he will be going to her wedding with her ‘‘young man,’’ and Lily bitterly replies, "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.’ he feels that he has made some sort of mistake. His pomposity and self-centeredness appear in his several encounters with the other guests, including Miss Ivors who playfully rebukes him for his loyalties to England as a reviewer for the pro-British newspaper Daily Express, calling him a "West Briton." He doesn’t know how to answer appropriately and finally he loses his control.
Near the close of the party, after retreating to the Hotel Gresham, Gabriel speaks to his wife, Gretta. Distracted from the conversation, Gretta is haunted by the song, which has reminded her of a former love. Gretta thinks, "I think he died for me." Gabriel, contemplating himself in a mirror, becomes aware of his own pettiness, and realizes that he has never loved his wife as Michael Furey did. At the close of the story Gabriel looks out the window of his room and watches the snow; "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Gabriel might change his attitude and embrace the present.
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