"The Dead" is the last chapter of "Dubliners" a book that contains fifteen short stories about the dubliners – a critical description about all social classes that lived in Dublin.
             In 1905 when James Joyce traied to publish the book it contained only eleven stories. They were rejected for publication because the stories shocked the publishers. Joyce however described the book as his "...little manifesto of Naturalism.".He said: "My intention was to write about moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the center of paralysis...".
             In 1912 the book was printed added for more three stories including "The Dead", the last one and the most controvertial. In this story Joyce shows the reader the middle class Catholic entrapped in Dublin society through their own inertia or improvident choices. Joyce himself defined "Dubliners" as a physical, moral and social chronicle under four aspects: 1) childhood, 2) adolescence, 3) maturity and 4) public life. The central image in "Dubliners" is the 'creeping insenbility'.
             The last story – The Dead – which we are going to discuss is consider as an epilogue or coda – the end of a series of events.
             James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882 in a prosperous suburb of Dublin. His father's family had been merchants for some generations but his father had spending habits and drank, what made it difficult for the Joyces to retain their previous social standing. The family was repeatedly forced to move to more modest residences.
             James was sent to Clongowes Wood School in 1888 – he was only six years old. Clongowes Wood School was a Jesuit institution considered as the best preparatory school in Ireland at that time. Like all Irish catholics, the Joyces had a tradition of legal and cultural repression.
             Ireland had suffer...