The last section of the story takes place in a hotel. The story’s middle section is a transition: as guests leave the house, Gabriel watches Gretta as she stands at the top of the stairs and listens to someone singing an Irish song, “The lass of Aughrim.” Gabriel notices his wife’s poise and thinks that if he were a painter he would paint her and call the picture “Distant music.” He recalls moments of their secret intimacy. The first and longest part of the story depicts the arrival of Gabriel at the house where the party is held, Gabriel’s emotions and thoughts as he talks with people there, and his speech of thanks to his aunts and cousin. He and his wife, Gretta, attend a Christmas party given by his two elderly aunts and his cousin, who are music teachers in Dublin. The main character in “The Dead” is Gabriel Conroy. One of the reasons “The Dead” is a great work of literature is because Joyce’s story was among the first to be based fully on inwardness, to communicate it indirectly, and to invite us to change how we feel and think about ourselves and others. In 1846 Søren Kierkegaard wrote that inwardness is a special kind of truth, a truth of subjectivity that is not based on information, not based on explanation or persuasion, not based on being told what to do or think. It was published in 1914 and, with its exploration of inwardness, it was a significant part of the modernist movement in literature. It is regarded as one of the world’s great short stories. James Joyce‘s “The Dead” is the last story in Dubliners.

“The Dead” brilliantly illustrates the potential of literary engagement to produce changes in conceptions of ourselves and others through metaphorical extension into, and identification with, the emotions and thoughts of a character about whom we read.ĭownload the article “The Inwardness of James Joyce’s Story, ‘The Dead'” as a PDF file (926 KB) With Joyce’s modernist story, we feel moved, and can start to know ourselves better while, at the same time, we may come to understand others and our predicament as human beings. Although our emotions are empathetically related to Gabriel’s they are our own, as we take on his concerns and plans in the circumstances he enters. In another layer Joyce offers an extended metaphor in which we are prompted to wonder whether understandings of others whom we might meet at a party have a relation to being intimate with a spouse. In one of these we identify with the story’s protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, so that we ourselves become metaphorical: we remain ourselves but also become Gabriel. James Joyce’s most famous short story, ”The Dead,” works in layers. By Keith Oatley, University of Toronto Maja Djikic, University of Toronto Raymond Mar, York University, Toronto

The dead james joyce summary