The Dead
One night around Christmas time, Gabriel Conroy, a youngish writer with gilt-framed round glasses, goes with his wife Gretta to the Christmas dance held at the home of the Misses Morkan: his aunts, Kate and Julia, and their niece, Mary Jane. A cheerful chaos reigns at the old women's house, with Lily, the caretaker's daughter, scampering about, and Gabriel's aunts worrying whether Freddy Malins will turn up drunk. A piano plays in a parlor full of dancing couples. Gabriel tells his aunts that on account of the cold, he and Gretta will be staying in a hotel nearby rather than returning home that night. Gretta laughingly confides to the old women that Gabriel has made her wear galoshes to the party and that he makes their son Tom lift dumbbells. The women laugh merrily. Freddy Malins arrives slightly drunk but not disastrously so. Gabriel goes downstairs to check on him, and Freddy heads into the parlor to talk to the gregarious Mr. Browne. The group assembles to listen to Mary Jane play a difficult piano piece, and Gabriel's mind wanders to his mother, who had opposed his marriage and described Gretta as "country cute." Gabriel remembers how Gretta nursed his mother through her long and ultimately fatal illness.
Tears fill his eyes; he feels as though the solid world is evaporating around him, and he is conscious of the flickering forms of the dead. Gabriel is full of joy and happiness about his wife; as he looks at her, he begins to think of scenes from their private life together. He imagines Aunt Kate sobbing and telling him how she died. In this sense, the genius of James Joyce in Dubliners is that he can show us the tragedy of the unknowability of anyone outside oneself while simultaneously giving us as complete a view as is possible into the essential character of human beings. The dance, the loud, foolish exchanges in the carriage, the dinner and the cheering after Gabriel's speech, come to life here as scenes rarely come to life in fiction. Gabriel finally takes a break from carving in order to eat, and the table discusses the state of operatic tenors in Ireland. This boy, Michael Furey, used to sing that song. Browne; music and the power of music over memory--all are concerns raised time and again throughout Dubliners, and all find their most supreme expression in "The Dead. ) This theme is hinted at when Gabriel is baffled by Miss Ivors's motives; when he is unable to see into his own wife, he is truly beginning to approach the realm "where dwell the vast hosts of the dead," who flicker invisibly in his consciousness. " The hour is late; the party is breaking up. Its opacity is not simply a function of weather; for Gabriel, the snow represents a deep and abiding human truth: the essential loneliness of the soul. He thinks that her face is no longer the face for which Michael Furey was willing to die.
Common topics in this essay:
Michael Furey,
Miss Ivors's,
Freddy Malins,
Malins Browne,
Gabriel Gretta,
Mary Jane,
Miss Ivors,
Aunt Kate,
Commentary Dead,
Misses Morkans',
michael furey,
miss ivors,
freddy malins,
story book,
snow falling,
love michael furey,
hopelessly severed,
love michael,
gabriel baffled,
dead story,
song lass aughrim,
mary jane,
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Acceptance Essays
