Julia Schwartz

June 1, 2004

Dubliners – “The Dead”

            James Joyce’s short story “The Dead” is an apt culmination for his book of short stories, Dubliners, and is fittingly the most celebrated story from his anthology. His tracing of Gabriel’s experiences one evening at a Christmas party and the observations Gabriel makes reveal a lot about a fairly typical Dubliner and the space between this personal moral reality and their moral example. In “The Dead,” Gabriel is a character who shows us the lapse of the modern citizen, where the lost lover, Michael Furey, is the extinct gentleman, the pride of Ireland – the dream of the woman.

            Where Gabriel’s persona is in no way blatantly poor – he proves himself to be cordial, well-mannered, and well-respected with his actions at the party – his image is cheapened when his wife proves to be having not sensual desires, as he is, but emotional nostalgia. Where Gabriel wants gratification from his wife, Gretta pines for companionship. The love for Gretta of Gabriel and Michael differs here – Gabriel is married to Gretta, and seems to exhibit a detached, lustful love, whereas the lost Michael was the most upstanding of suitors, taking her for walks in the countryside.

            This contrast between the two men’s forms of love is the most powerful of the statements Joyce makes, for with it, he shows two Dublins: the old, which is remembered fondly, which could do no wrong, which was morally upstanding and a victim of chance; and the new, which only wants people when it is convenient, which allows relationships to drift apart, which doesn’t understand very much on the emotional level. The Michael Dublin is gone; it is the Gabriel Dublin which remains. The Gabriel Dublin will do, and at times can be wonderful, but in the end, we all dream of Michael.

            In the same way, Gretta is dreaming of something she can never have, for Michael is dead and Gabriel is only himself – he can’t change who he is to grant her wishes. In that sense, Joyce shows the reality of Dublin , and accepts that it is the case. The modern Dublin that he sees can be molded into something better; it can be influenced and bettered. Gretta is able to find comfort with her husband and make a life; this is shown with the knowledge of their past life and growing children together. If Gretta is able to compromise – to settle for Gabriel over Michael and still be happy – then why cannot the citizens of Dublin compromise and take Dublin for what it is today, instead of always wishing for the Dublin of days past and rejecting all that is available to them today?

             It is odd that the story of “The Dead” itself takes place on Christmas Eve – we do not often think of the dead on Christmas; instead, Christmas, as the celebration of Christ’s birth, is typically a time of renewal and joy. The contrast of Julia’s poor health and Michael’s past deterioration with the vivacity of certain other characters and the meaning of the holiday in general says a great deal about the cycle of life, as is, at one point, realized by Gabriel himself. In a beautifully worded finale, the snow in the last line of “The Dead” falls “like the descent of their last end” (225). That last end is death itself, but it is not the only end – it is the last end. So, then, life has more than one end; and with that it can be said that life is a series of ends – and therefore, life must also contain a series of beginnings. This pattern of life is nonstop, and in some ways, is a consolation, because with every end, there will be a new beginning. If there is always a new beginning to look forward to, the end must not be feared.

            The end of Michael Furey and the impending end of Aunt Julia are hard to cope with, for they are indeed culminations of lives well-lived, though sometimes not long enough. But still, life goes on around them and something else will begin. In Gretta’s case, the end for Michael meant a beginning with Gabriel, who must have made her happy in at least some ways through her life. And that snow, falling outside the Conroy’s hotel window, falls on everything – not just the living. Joyce has shown us, with this depiction, that the dead don’t ever leave our world, but instead remain here with us as legacies.

            We can only mourn the dead for a short period, because this is not what will keep them alive in the world. What will keep the dead alive is their immortalization through memory – Michael is still and always will be alive in the mind of Gretta and her undying love and devotion to his memory – in her eternal respect for his frail constitution and her sympathy for his unlimited love for her. When Gabriel’s Aunt Julia dies, she will be physically gone from the earth, but her legacy will remain, and she will be alive in the hearts and minds of all whose lives she touched. Our dead only die when we forget them.

            This is the issue of moral importance that Joyce must want to urge in his work. In his mind, Dublin is a city of great importance, on par with the other great cities of the world. And while a great deal of a city’s identity is in what it can offer at present, more of it is in what it offers with its past: its traditions, its legacies, its stories. Dublin is a city that will always be alive, because even if it has fallen a bit in the present, it always has that past to fall back on – the old Irish country ballads, the green hills, and the infinite love of the lost Michael Furey. That Dublin will remain alive for as long as the people of the city choose to remember it, and, like Joyce, tell stories of it. With that, it can remain alive, and there can be comparisons drawn between the old and the good of the new, and then the new doesn’t become nearly so bad.

            The “good one” of “The Dead” is clearly Gretta. She is the one to have shown an innocent love, she does not manipulate her family as it seems Gabriel does with his demands of Gretta to wear galoshes and their son to lift weights, and she commands respect from everyone who knows her. She also selflessly helped Gabriel’s mother with her illness in the past, though she was not able to save her. Gretta’s goodness, perhaps, comes either out of the tragedies she has been witness to in her life between Michael and Gabriel’s mother, or because of them. It is best to think that she is good out of an honor to the dead – in a way, her goodness makes her continued vigor justified, instead of her being a waste of life, a slap in the face to those who lived life well but were not able to hold onto it – like Michael Furey.

            In the end, Joyce achieves his goal of pointing out the morality of Dublin . Without ever commenting directly on the ideal moral code or the ways the present society might have drifted from that ideal, he poses an interpretation of the way things are and ways that society might elevate itself to be what it should – to be the society of a great world city. Through everything, even his distaste for certain lapses in Dubliners’ characters, Joyce still maintains a pride in his native city and country that is backed by that most potent of indicators: love.