Critical History of “the Dead”
Entry for Week 1 -- Critical History of “The Dead”
I found it interesting that the city of Dublin could be thought of as a major character of Dubliners and/or of The Dead. From everything I have read so far, it definitely is obvious that Joyce was struggling with Ireland’s apparent unwillingness to define itself, either as Roman Catholic or as Protestant. And also, he feels that religion is too much the focus of the country, too strict, too regimented.
Schwarz writes on page 67 that Gabriel “lapses out of his paralytic self consciousness to become part of the reality of being.” I completely agree. It seems to me that Gabriel probably was too caught up in his bourgeoise, educated life to be able to experience true feeling, true love and true loss. With the story’s end events unfolding Gabriel is suddenly exposed to true feelings of both love and loss. The feelings of true love are not his own, but as Gabriel’s tears flow while Gretta is asleep, the narrator tells us “He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.” Through this discovery, Gabriel has experienced a previously unknown dimension of emotion, which has brought him further away from his superficial world and much closer to a deeper world of true feeling and compassion. This sentiment is further supported by Tate’s reference on page 69. He says Gabriel represents an “emotional sterility” and Gretta has a “peasant richness.” He goes on to say that Dublin is devoted to a “genteel culture…an evasion of reality.” Dublin’s devotion to aristocracy is mirrored in Gabriel himself.
On page 77, I do understand MacCabe’s notion that “language introduces to us an existence which can never be satisfied...something is always missing.” However, further down the page I am a bit confused about this quote: “in Joyce’s text, the division between signifier and signified becomes an area in which the reader is in (and at) play – producing meaning
I found it interesting that the city of Dublin could be thought of as a major character of Dubliners and/or of The Dead. From everything I have read so far, it definitely is obvious that Joyce was struggling with Ireland’s apparent unwillingness to define itself, either as Roman Catholic or as Protestant. And also, he feels that religion is too much the focus of the country, too strict, too regimented.
Schwarz writes on page 67 that Gabriel “lapses out of his paralytic self consciousness to become part of the reality of being.” I completely agree. It seems to me that Gabriel probably was too caught up in his bourgeoise, educated life to be able to experience true feeling, true love and true loss. With the story’s end events unfolding Gabriel is suddenly exposed to true feelings of both love and loss. The feelings of true love are not his own, but as Gabriel’s tears flow while Gretta is asleep, the narrator tells us “He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.” Through this discovery, Gabriel has experienced a previously unknown dimension of emotion, which has brought him further away from his superficial world and much closer to a deeper world of true feeling and compassion. This sentiment is further supported by Tate’s reference on page 69. He says Gabriel represents an “emotional sterility” and Gretta has a “peasant richness.” He goes on to say that Dublin is devoted to a “genteel culture…an evasion of reality.” Dublin’s devotion to aristocracy is mirrored in Gabriel himself.
On page 77, I do understand MacCabe’s notion that “language introduces to us an existence which can never be satisfied...something is always missing.” However, further down the page I am a bit confused about this quote: “in Joyce’s text, the division between signifier and signified becomes an area in which the reader is in (and at) play – producing meaning