FREE ESSAY ON JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD

JAMES JOYCE'S THE DEAD

Ariel Maraguglio
Mr. White
"The Dead" Essay
September 25, 2000
James Joyce's significantly titled story "The Dead" is about a dead generation and
society of people. Joyce's decision to add Gretta's reminiscing with the dead Michael
Furey in "The Dead" is extremely important. Perhaps if Joyce decided to end the story
after Gabriel's speech or the setting up of the dinner party, we would still be left with
a very pleasant short story. However, Joyce continues on with a significant encounter of
the dead Michael Furey that uncovers a side Gabriel has never recognized of himself. The
dead in "The Dead" bring out new realizations of Gabriel's life and interfere with the
way he is living it. Michael Furey is the final eruption of the past in "The Dead". It
causes Gabriel to feel his animalistic nature, a dull anger and the dull fires of his
lust ( ), which is then replaced by shame. On the trip home, while he had been full of
memories of their shared past, she had been comparing him in her mind with another. ( )
His rage gives way to shame and self-degradation: he 
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sees himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a penny boy for his aunts, a nervous
well-meaning sentimentalist orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts.
( ) 
He overcomes his own shame and rage to draw the rest of the story out of his wife,
Gretta: She was in love with Michael Furey, or as she says, great with him at the time.
It is a wonderful phrase; she seems as if she is still great with Michael Furey and there
is no room for Gabriel, her husband of so many years. Gabriel feels the hand of the past
reaching forward to destroy the present, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming
against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world. ( ) Gretta cries herself to
sleep and Gabriel passes into one final mood, of acceptance. He now looks at Gretta
unresentfully( ), and with a strange friendly pity ( ), even as he realizes how poor a
part he has played in his wife's life. He recognizes that his love is not on the same
plane as Michael Furey's because no one, not Gretta or another, has ever made Gabriel
wish to die (the way Michael did for Gretta). Then Gabriel and his world 
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dissolve. Most likely he is falling asleep; but Joyce says that his soul had approached
that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead."( ) The dead, Michael Furey, is
overcoming him. Gabriel, by his ideas, tastes, and sensitivities has been isolated from
others, but always found support in his self-esteem. Michael Furey has destroyed this.
Michael was first in Gretta's love and Gretta is incapable of perceiving the importance
that this has for Gabriel. By introducing Michael Furey, Joyce provides an explanation to
Gabriel's statement in his speech: How "living affections" claim "our strenuous
endeavors." ( )