The dead door James Joyce

Death as a theme in James Joyce\'s The Dead The Dead is the final story in Dubliners, a collection of short stories that Joyce published in 1914. It stands out against the other stories and can be seen as a sort of commentary on them. The central questions around which this final story is conceived, are: what does it mean to be alive and what does it mean to be dead? To my opinion, you could even narrow the viewpoint to: which life path is to be preferred, Gabriel Conroy\'s or Michael Furey\'s? In this essay, I will argue that one of the several structural principles in this story is an implicit comparison. First Joyce defines the principles of being alive or dead. This is done in short anecdotes about dead loved ones and it is especially stressed in Gabriel\'s dinner speech. Then in the end of the story, the lives of Michael and Gabriel are implicitly compared with these principles, in order to judge which of the two has lived the better life. Death is present from the beginning in this short story, though not on the surface. The events of the plot themselves are not explicitly linked with death. The plot is rather banal. The story describes a fairly boring party with basically quite uninteresting guests. Yet through an extremely suggestive choice of words, Joyce evokes an eerie atmosphere of death and decay in an otherwise innocent opening. An example is already found in the first words that protagonist Gabriel Conroy utters: “…but they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.” This is a very strange way to simply say that it takes her long to get dressed. The \"mortal\" is sharply stressed because of this strange formulation. Other examples of this kind are easily found throughout the text. The words “dark” and “pale” are also omnipresent in the text and they are especially used to describe the appearance of characters (\"She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion” \"and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face”). These words are clearly also linked in a context of death. It even appears that Morkan, the family name of the party hosts, is probably derived from \"morke\" which is the Danish word for dark. Joyce is infamous for his wordplay and references to other languages. The names of some characters also carry certain connotations which cannot be a coincidence. Some critics even claim that with Joyce nothing is ever a coincidence. The first name that appears in the text is that of Lily, the caretaker\'s daughter. This name immediately triggers the image of the lily flower. This flower is especially popular at funerals and its association with death is immediately obvious. But the lily is also associated with an angel, namely the Archangel Gabriel. This brings us to the main protagonist, Gabriel Conroy. Gabriel is the Archangel of Death and of (the possibility of) rebirth. He is also the Archangel of the Devine Message, Gods Message Bearer so to speak, which is a bit ironical because one of Gabriel\'s major flaws seems to be his bad communication. Gabriel is also known in ecclesiastical literature as \"the Governor of the West\", which does seem to fit the irony of this proud established Irishman who actually gives in to his British occupants. Michael, Gabriel\'s counterpart in the story, is also an Archangel, but he is an angel of energy, prowess and action. He is heroic and pure, just like Michael Furey appears to be. Michael is able to live up to the expectations that his name creates, while Gabriel seems to be a parody of his Archangel. Now what does it mean to be alive or dead? Joyce tackles this problem in short, usually flattering or funny anecdotes about dead great ones of the past. Examples are flattering words about Gabriel\'s mother Ellen, a funny story about the late Patrick Morkan or the glorification of a legendary but forgotten tenor called Parkinson. It is striking that in all these stories the dead protagonists are pure, almost stereotypical archetypes of a certain aspect of their character. The fullness of their personality, including their bad sides, seems to be forgotten and only their qualities remembered. It is like they are covered with snow and only their stereotypically seen good side is still visible. Yet the main comment on death and the dead is found in Gabriel\'s dinner speech. Next to some hypocritical flattery towards the party hosts, Gabriel\'s most important point is “…we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die” It is a speech in which the past virtues of the dead are praised and given as an example to the struggling youth. In fact, the dead do not seem to have had a flaw at all. All their shortcomings are entirely forgotten and they are even promoted to an unattainable ideal for the present society. Against the image of their (supposed) grandness, any living man immediately crumbles in comparison. This also happens to Gabriel. When about to leave the party, Gabriel notices that his wife Gretta is clearly very emotional about something. She confesses to him that she was thinking about Michael Furey, a boy from her youth who died just to see Gretta one more time before she was to leave. Gabriel is immediately overcome by emotions. He realises his own relativity and meaninglessness and this scares him; he was not even so absolutely important in the life of his own wife as he thought before. Then what would he matter as a person when compared to all the great personalities of the past? His whole life as he knew it, comes crumbling down around him. He becomes aware of the shades of the dead around him and he can foresee that he too will be one of them before not too long a time: “One by one, they were all becoming shades.” Besides the relativity of his own being, Gabriel is of course also struck by the implicit comparison between himself and the dead Michael Furey. He knows that this is a comparison which he could never win, for the simple fact that he is still alive and Furey is not. “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age” is his painful conclusion, but is it a just one? Maybe Gabriel makes more of this Michael Furey story than Gretta actually intended. Gabriel concludes that his life with Gretta has been a waste and that a life/relationship like Michael Furey had, is to be preferred. Yet it is probable that Gretta would not have agreed. There are no indications whatsoever that Gretta considers her life with Gabriel a waste or that she is not happy. Their mutual affection seems to be genuine. Gabriel even fondly remembers a joyful \"secret life\" that they had shared. In a way both Gabriel and Michael missed out on something in their relationship to Gretta. Gabriel missed the youthful passion, but Michael missed the comfort of a mature love relationship. Gabriel is seeing himself and his life in an overly negative light. The Dead are covered in snow, but that does not mean that the figures under the snow were any better than the living.

Bibliography Boyd, J.D. and Boyd, R.A., The love triangle in Joyce\'s \'The Dead\', James Joyce Quarterly volume 42, 1972-1973.

Eggers, T., What is a Woman... a Symbol of?, James Joyce Quarterly volume 18; 1980-1981.

Torchiana, D.T., The Ending of \'The Dead\': I follow Saint Patrick, James Joyce Quarterly volume 18, 1980-1981.

Internet Resources http://www.sarahsarchangels.com
http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~bcadbury/dead95.html