The Dead By James Joyce

Unburdened by excessive length and convoluted storytelling, James Joyce’s The Dead is able to detail and explore simple and brief, though highly intimate, moments of visceral human emotion and engage deeply with an array of themes. In this sense, The Dead is driven far more by an investigation of characters’ motivations, emotions and reactions, and the continued development thereof, than it is by plot. Nevertheless, the story’s enduring success reflects that this has resonated with audiences. Despite, or perhaps due to, The Dead’s concise length, being only 15,672 words, Joyce is able to tell a fully formed, sophisticated and emotionally engaging story, which presents and analyses a number of core themes. Consequently, Joyce's seminal story
Thus, The Dead depicts and addresses several prominent aspects of Irish nationality and culture, and in doing so Joyce displays a strong, unmistakable sense of nationalism (Bendiba 2013). Bendiba (2013, p.3) explains the pervasive nature of what she dubs ‘Irishness’ in Joyce’s work, “the Irishness of Dubliners can be studied at, at least, five levels: religious questions, cultural aspects, political situation, geographical distribution and personal experience.” Evidently, given the broadness of these themes, a sense of Irish parochialism influences nearly all aspects of The Dead. Bennion (1997, p.1) corroborates, but goes further and posits that the story’s characters are not only uniquely Irish, but uniquely Dubliners, “As the name Dubliners implies, the main characters in these stories are typical people, each of whom somehow represents Dublin society.” Kelleher (1965, p.425) elaborates upon this, providing insight into the significance of Irish patriotism in developing an understanding of Gabriel and his emotional struggles, “All the others at the party, except for Mr. Browne, are Irish and Catholic and, however perfunctory their sentiments, nationalists. Only Gabriel is alienated, cut off from his roots.” Gabriel’s struggle with his sense of
Kelleher (1965) demonstrates the extent to which Joyce took this, citing Mary Jane’s initial mispronunciation of Gabriel Conroy’s last name - calling him instead Mr Connery - with the errant vowel indicating she possesses a Dublin lower-class accent. Kelleher (1965, p.419) also explains the significance Mr Conroy’s name, and Mary Jane’s subsequent mispronunciation, hold in Irish