The living in ‘The Dead’ - A social critic and a glimpse over this society Joyce criticizes

student: Jorge A. Capel, Letras Port. Ingl. Franc.

The techniques and themes of the modern novel were affected by social changes and a very different point of view towards the world. They knew an unprecedented series of innovations, starting from the subjects chosen until the way they were presented. These changes took the form of the two most important revelations of modern literature: the concept of “epiphany” and “stream of consciousness” technique. They were put in action by many of the twentieth century novelists, such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, being the most relevant.
The perspective from which the writer tells the story "The Dead'' is in the third-person limited point of view. Although the narrator describes the action of many of the characters and even situations of some events Gabriel does not witness, only Gabriel's thoughts are given. Joyce's writing style is also relevant when discussing the theme proposed.
In his short story ‘‘The Dead,’’ James Joyce symbolically presents his critical view of Dublin society, and it is noticeable that Joyce’s Irish experiences are essential to his writings and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of their subject matter.
To better understand the society he criticizes it is important to know that in the nineteenth century the European society was essentially bourgeois and the literature was solidly anchored in this social world. Therefore, to understand the living and Joyce’s critics about the society he lived in, it is necessary to understand how this society worked and in what principles it was based on.
In that society women were represented as ideal Victorian ladies, who endured the ups and downs of life, in the name of a social code. Respectability was achieved only through marriage. Genuine love and respect had nothing to do with family, since the outside signs of respectability were more important, than its essence. By showing us Gretta feeling extremely sad and missing her young love, Joyce represented a danger to the institution of marriage and the fragile foundation of a false social system.
Leaving Dublin became a necessity to Joyce, because he was a strong supporter of the idea that the artist must be isolated from his object of inspiration, in order to ensure total objectivity – in this case, he thought he could have a better view of his country’s society if he had an outer view of it. He believed it would make him see the flaws everybody pretended not to exist.
As we get to the end, Michael Furey, the young man who died after thoughtlessly visiting his lover, Gretta, in spite of his serious illness changes the course of the story. This was, according to the norms of the society, something foolish and pointless. However, Joyce implies that by doing such a touching gesture, the young man acquires a hero-like aura: “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” Achieving a kind of martyr’s status, so we could imply that Michael Furey becomes a danger to the lofty behavior considered to be distinguishing of a gentleman.
His stories represented a danger to the fragile balance of the time, because they pointed out that society was heavily flawed and that instead of trying to fix the flaws, it ignored them and, even worse, covered them up, under the pretext of tradition.
To guide this analysis it is important to set the time and place where I am going to begin establishing the connection between the living and the dead and which symbols Joyce uses to make this contradiction.
The story starts to get completely different after the hotel scene, in which a very well hidden secret from Gretta is told. At this point Gretta tells her husband Gabriel that she once had a young lover and that they were very close to each other at the time, but he ended up dying very young. Gabriel, of course, gets angry and we can notice from his thoughts and acts that he is deeply nervous. It all gets worse when he asks her ironically what he died of, and she tells him that she thinks he died for her. That simple phrase is enough to make Gabriel’s head ache with thoughts, and those thoughts go from Gretta’s love for him to his aunt Julia’s death, that, in his opinion, was about to happen. That very simple thought is enough to make him realize really meaningful things about life, and how, in the end, one by one, we are all becoming shadows.
From that conversation with his wife, Gabriel also discovers that all of that time he had played a very poor part in his wife’s life, or at least not as important of a part as the one played by Michael Furey, the man who died for Gretta’s sake. The most important thing about this event is that Gabriel finally sees that feeling love for someone is a lot more than what he feels for his wife, admitting that he had never felt he could die for any woman, and he was sure that what Michael felt was love. Love defines life and death in this tale as, to Gretta, at this point, Michael seems to be closer to her than Gabriel, so the love they both feel for her defines who is dead and who is alive for Gretta. Gabriel knows that his feelings for his wife were not as intense as Michael’s, and it unfolded his eyes to the truth, that we can all be either dead at some point to someone, even if we are not physically gone. Michael was gone, but his memory is Gretta’s mind was still very vivid and almost alive, not simply a shade as Gabriel himself says, but a full memory.
Joyce was one of the first writers to practice the mimetic style. Mimetic style—a style that mimics or imitates—does not report thoughts using objective language but shows the character's thoughts by using streams of consciousness, illustrating and representing, in the written form, a character’s inner thoughts and memories. It does not follow a sequential time line, and Joyce uses this technique to define and describe a character, from his very thoughts.
It is Gabriel’s thoughts and memories that make it possible for us to define the characters of Gabriel and Gretta, and after that define the concepts of life and death proposed by Joyce in the story.
The theme of the story is that of a spiritual paralysis which has seized a lifeless or "dead" society and of the vital effect in paradoxical contrast that the dead may have upon the living in urging them to a fuller self-awareness. Joyce believed that Dublin was the center of this paralysis, having spent his childhood there and then having compared it to the more liberal society of Paris. So comparing the symbolically living and the symbolically dead, the author works with the contrasting images of darkness and light, blindness and perception, cold and warmth, society at large and the individual experience, upper middle-class.
This might be the most important issue of Joyce’s story, because it shows symbolically how ‘the dead’ made Gabriel more aware of himself and what love meant for him. This may seem not very logical as ‘the dead’ could not actually ‘do’ anything to awaken that awareness, but the love Gretta described was alive enough to touch him and make him think of his feelings and what his concepts of love were.

Joyce uses these symbols of life and death not only to define the characters, as they become more self aware in the end of the story, but we could also infer that this alive/dead parallel implies all of his social critics as the fake society he describes is dead to some principles and there is this need of self awareness that they seem to lack. Joyce’s story pose more than just a “salutary danger” to society; they are a wake up call for everybody and not just Ireland. It brings forth all of society’s mistakes and flaws, with the visible intention of trying to correct them. It shouts to be heard and to make a difference.


“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.”