“The Dead” (short story) in James Joyce’s Dubliners (collection of short stories): "The Dead" is the final short story in the 1914 collection Dubliners by James Joyce. It is the longest story in the collection and is often considered the best of Joyce's shorter works. At 15,672 words it has also been considered a novella. It was made into a film also entitled The Dead in 1987, directed by John Huston. In 1999 it was adapted into a musical by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey. Christopher Walken starred in the original production. In "The Dead" Joyce depicts a complicated marriage filled with secrets, but also with love. The story centres on Gabriel Conroy on the night of the Morkan sisters' annual dance and dinner in the first week of January 1904, perhaps the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). Typical of the stories in Dubliners, "The Dead" develops toward a moment of painful selfawareness; Joyce described this as an epiphany. The narrative generally concentrates on Gabriel's insecurities, his social awkwardness, and the defensive way he copes with his discomfort. The story culminates at the point when Gabriel discovers that, through years of marriage, there was much he never knew of his wife's past. About the author: James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in a suburb of Dublin. He was one of twelve children raised in poverty by a father who wasted the family fortunes and a mother who died at the age of forty-four. At the age of six, Joyce was sent to a Jesuit boarding school, Clongowes Wood College. In 1902, he graduated from University College in Dublin, where he studied foreign languages and philosophy. Immediately after graduation, Joyce left Dublin to study medicine in Paris, but he returned to Ireland in 1903 to see his dying mother. In June 1904 he met his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and they moved to Trieste and then Zurich, where he taught languages at the Berlitz School. They had two children—Giorgio, born in 1905, and Lucia, born in 1907. Joyce's first major work, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, a novel published in serial form beginning in 1914, established his literary reputation. The book was ground-breaking in its form, depicting the growth of an Irish Catholic boy solely through the consciousness of the narrator. Joyce also published a collection of short stories, Dubliners, that same year, and began work on what many critics consider his crowning achievement, Ulysses. Finally published in 1922, Ulysses earned Joyce charges of obscenity and did not appear in an American edition until 1934. The novel, which loosely follows the structure of Homer's Odyssey, traces one day in the lives of Stephen Dedalus, the hero of Portrait, and Leopold and Molly Bloom, a Dublin couple. Encyclopaedic in both its use of narrative techniques and its attention to the details of everyday life, Ulysses redefined the novel as a genre. In 1939, Joyce completed his last book, Finnegan’s Wake, a radical, extravagant experiment in language and narrative. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941. Download a copy of “The Dead” here: http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2814 Watch the film adaptation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVJc9fzqAcI Other interesting information: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2006/dec/02/stage
Key themes and techniques: Contemporary Irish politics: Ireland, like many countries, has a long history of struggle against foreign imperialism, and in particular against the imperialism of her neighbour to the east, Great Britain. In the tension between Gabriel and Ms. Ivors, we see that struggle reflected. Ms. Ivors interprets any affection for English culture as an act of betrayal, and tells Gabriel as much, whereas Gabriel believes his Irish heritage can blend harmoniously with 'Continental' traditions and fashions. The issue remains unresolved, but the important thing to notice is the difficulty these Irish citizens face in trying to establish their own cultural identity. The pain of aging: While politics are important in this story, the most central human theme is the pain and difficulty of aging. The theme of aging is alluded to several times throughout the story, whenever Gabriel notices his disconnect from the younger generation, but is most evident at the story's conclusion, when Gabriel not only has his deepest appreciation of the swift passage of time, but also understands himself and his wife to have been passed up by time. Already, he senses, they've left the current moment and become part of history. Stream-of-consciousness: Of all the literary techniques Joyce is known for, the most important is his pioneering of stream-of-consciousness, a method by which the author conveys to his reader not only a character's thoughts, but the development of those thoughts as they arise from the character's sensory perceptions, in real time. This story does not offer very prominent examples of stream-of-consciousness (for that, read Joyce's Ulysses), but at the end of the story, once Gretta is asleep, we see Gabriel's ruminations about aging and death develop out of the room's lighting, the snow on the window, etc. It is a subtle, effective use of this ground-breaking technique.
Questions: We hear the location is on Usher's Island. What are the connotations of the word "Usher" and how does it connect to the title and themes of the work? Why does Gabriel claim he is giving Lily some money? What do you suppose his real motivation is for passing off the coin to her? Why is Gabriel worried about quoting lines from Robert Browning in his Christmas speech? During dinner, the discussion begins to settle on monastic practices, including the rumor that certain orders of monks sleep in coffins. Why do they do this, according to Mary Jane? How does this connect with the themes and title of this short story? Mr Browne seems confused by all this. How is his religious background different from most of the guests? How does Gabriel kick off his speech? What is his theme here? Explain the political symbolism about Patrick Morkan's horse Johnny walking in endless circles around the statue of King Billy (English King William).