Courtney
Maxwell
Joyce
Essay
AP
Literature and Composition
Mr.
Steen
Period
5
James
Joyce’s “The Dead”
As the title implies, James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” is very
much about death and dying. The ‘death’ Joyce writes about though, is not so
much a literal one, but one of a spiritual nature (although characters in the
story who have literally died, such as Michael Furey, contribute greatly to the
development of the story). The ‘death’ that Joyce writes about is the
destructive hold Ireland has over its people. Ireland ‘kills’ its citizens
by forcing them into passionless existences and prevents them from succeeding.
One such person ‘killed’ by Ireland is Gabriel Conroy, the main character,
who has been paralyzed by Ireland through many things including his routine job.
However, only in the final passages of the story do we see how much Gabriel has
been harmed by Ireland and this is Gabriel’s final epiphany. Throughout the
story, but especially during Gabriel’s final epiphany, Joyce uses the image of
snow to symbolize the loneliness of Gabriel’s soul and the helplessness he
feels.
In the final passages, Gabriel is visited by the shades of death. Due to
the night’s events at his Aunt Julia and Aunt Kate’s holiday party; his
confrontations with Lily and Miss Ivors, his dilemmas with his speech at the
party, and finally his wife’s admittance of a past true love, he has come to
realize he is not the man he once thought he was. He feels humiliated and full
of shame because while he was desiring his wife, she was imagining another man
for whom she felt true love. Now, he feels ridiculous because his love is
compared to that of Michael Furey, a 17 year old gasworker who visited
Gabriel’s wife in the rain one night during her youth. The cold rain worsened
the already frail and sick Furey and finally led to his death. Hence, he
‘died’ for love. “Gabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and
by the evocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he
had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and
joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another.” Gabriel
sees that he has never known true love and that Gretta, his wife, has felt more
love toward Michael Furey than she has had for him. It is at this point that
Gabriel realizes his preoccupation with himself and sees that he is not superior
to everyone on the basis of his education, as he had once thought when he was at
the party. It is at this juncture that he has an epiphany. This epiphany is one
of shame in learning of his wife’s true love. He also suddenly realizes that
life without passion and intensity is no life at all. In fact, Gabriel realizes
that in living this type of life, he is essentially ‘dead’ or a dead member
of a dead society.
At the end of the story, he watches his wife sleep and remembers the
romance with Michael Furey she talked about. Gabriel now sees that he played an
insignificant role in her life because her true love was someone else. While he
watches Gretta sleep, he discovers that his wife’s face and beauty has in a
way faded with life and is no longer the face Michael Furey was willing to die
for. “He did not like to say even to himself that her face was no longer
beautiful, but he knew that it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey
had braved death.” He then imagines his Aunt Julia’s death, Aunt Kate
sobbing and telling him how she died. All those he loves, as well as himself,
are becoming “shades”, death is coming to everyone and the world as he knows
it is disintegrating around him. As his eyes well up in tears he sees the vague
forms of the dead around him, flickering.
The final paragraph opens with snow lightly tapping on the window pane,
just as Gabriel tapped on the window earlier in the story at the party and
Michael Furey tapped on Gretta’s window with stones during Gretta’s youth.
Snow, a symbol of death, is tapping at Gabriel’s window. Gabriel and Michael
Furey can also be compared to death knocking because Gabriel is living a
lifeless existence and Michael Fury is literally dead. Gabriel is described as
watching “sleepily the flakes, silver and dark falling obliquely against the
lamplight.” Sleep is closely related to death, which makes sense since Gabriel
is “sleepily” watching the snow, a symbol of death. It is then said that the
time had come for Gabriel to “set out on his journey westward”. Just as the
sun setting in the west symbolizes death, Gabriel’s “journey westward”
symbolizes his journey to death. At this time Gabriel is spiritually dying and
close to death.
Then the image of snow, death, is used again:
Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the
dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen
and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It
was falling too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where
Michael Furey lay buried . . .
The
image of snow here represents a spirit of death prevailing all over Ireland.
Joyce portrays Ireland as destroying and trapping all it’s citizens. He means
to show that in a sense Ireland is killing it’s people, not allowing them to
become the best they can be and creating a dead society. Therefore, the
snow/death, is covering all of Ireland and effecting everyone. At this point,
Gabriel knows he is part of common humanity and no longer superior because the
snow/death does not differentiate between the people of Ireland. The snow is
further described as covering images of death, such as the graveyard, and images
of renewal, such as the crosses.
Joyce also uses syntax and rhythm, especially in the last paragraph where
he creates a rocking motion, from which Gabriel falls asleep at the very end of
the story. In the last sentence 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,” the rocking
motion is quite evident. There is an acoustic beauty to this sentence and
throughout the whole last paragraph through the use of syntax and rhythm that
sounds like a lullaby rocking Gabriel to sleep. Also, when Joyce uses
alliteration and consistent articulated sounds such as <s> in words such
as soul, swooned, slowly, and snow and <f> in words such as faintly and
falling, Joyce is able to relate words that are quite different through rhyme
and similarly articulated sounds.
At the end of the story, the reader is left with a feeling of woe and
depression. James Joyce brilliantly conveys the distressed nature of Ireland
through Gabriel’s character and his unique style of writing (use of syntax and
rhythm) beautifully details the lifestyle in Ireland. It is unknown in the
closing paragraph if Gabriel’s soul is doomed for death or capable of renewal,
but we do know that his soul is “fainting” just as the snow is “falling
faintly” on “all the living and the dead” as well as all the readers of
this timeless story.