The Dead, by James Joyce, takes place in Dublin, Ireland during the winter of 1904 and is the fifteenth and final story of Joyce’s 1914 collection entitled Dubliners. Joyce published Dubliners right before World War I broke out and the story is heavily charged with references to the coming apocalypse.
The story alternates between the narrator’s third person view of the events and Gabriel Conroy’s first person perspective as he attends a grand Christmas dinner with family and friends. From the beginning, Gabriel is described as a hard working scholar, a typical example of the modern man of the time. Gabriel is detached from both the world and his surroundings, as shown by his awkward interactions with his family.
On the other hand, Gabriel’s wife Gretta represents a symbol of the past with her traditional values and is seen to be closer to the olden days than Gabriel. This is further highlighted when Gabriel tells Gretta about his epiphany during the course of the dinner, when he realises how unable he is to truly connect with the older generations and his past.
At the end of the dinner, Gretta reveals that she was remembering a long-lost love from her younger days and Gabriel’s epiphany becomes complete when he realises how unaware he is of Gretta’s life outside of their marriage and although the past cannot be recovered, he vows to make an effort to be more attentive in the future.
The end of the story is filled with sadness, as Gretta has been reminded of her old love Michael Furey, and the fact that Michael died in order to win Gretta as his own. This contrast between life and death brings to the reader’s mind the feeling of standing at a crossroad between the living and the dead.
The Dead is a touching story not only because of the parallel between the living and the dead, but also because of the internal drama of the protagonist. Gabriel’s epiphany that his detachment from the past has made him an incomplete person - unappreciative of the living and the dead - serves as the climax of the story. Joyce wrote The Dead with a focus on the underlying theme of mortality, and the story serves as a reminder of our mortality, urging us to be thankful for what we have and for our own lives.
