James Joyce's short story "The Dead" deals with the meaning of life. This title is significant and enhances several aspects of the story. First of all, it reveals that the characters are unable to be emotional. They are physically living but emotionally dead. Second of all, it contributes to the main subject of the story, Gabriel's epiphany. The title contributes to these aspects of the story by adding meaning and acting as a reminder of the overall theme of the story.
The title, "The Dead", reveals the difference between how the people appear to be and who they really are. All the people at the party appear lively, but inside, these people are dead. Dead in this context implies that they are emotionally dead, but also that they are unable to change. Apart from Gabriel, everyone is unable to change. This is because they have adapted to their lifestyles and set themselves in a pattern that does not allow them to change. The characters especially do not interact with each other as human beings, they are each too involved in themselves. In the coatroom, Lily says to Gabriel that men are "only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (Joyce 857). This statement would have resulted in some type of reaction from Gabriel. Instead, Gabriel ignores it, follows the ritual and gives Lily a coin. Another sign of the ritual is Mary Jane playing the piano, something she does every year. Gabriel "doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners" (Joyce 861). Despite this apparent lack of talent, Mary Jane continues to play every year and nobody informs her that her piano playing is not very good. These are both examples of something common to all the characters. They are all emotionally unavailable and simply observe...
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...ally living, they are emotionally dead. Gabriel achieves his epiphany and becomes one of the living by having his emotions stimulated. In the end, the title acts as a reminder that while Gabriel is alive, he is not above death, meaning that hiding from reality is not the way to live.
Works Cited
Bowen, Zack. Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Eco, Umberto. The Aesthetics of Chaosmos. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Joyce, James. "The Dead." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Sixth Edition. R.V Cassill and Richard Bausch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000: 855-884.
Shwarz, Daniel R. "A Critical History of `The Dead.'" The Dead. Ed. Daniel R. Schwarz. New York: Bedford Books, 1994: 63-84.
Werner, Craig H. Dubliners: A Student's Companion to the Stories. Boston: Twayne, 1988.
In Susan Mitchell’s poem “The Dead”, the speaker describes the life of a dead person to show that those we lose aren’t truly gone. The poem starts out talking about what dead people do in their afterlife, starting to form a picture in the reader’s head. Towards the middle, she starts using personal connections and memories associated with what the dead are doing. This shows us that they will always be there to remind us of memories shared together. At the end of the poem, the reader shows us that she is talking about someone who has passed that was close to her in her childhood. Perhaps Mitchell wrote this trying to get over the loss of a loved one, showing that they will never be forgotten. The poem has a
__________. "The Lives of the Dead." The Things They Carried. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990. 255-273.
Timothy O’ Sullivan’s “A Harvest of Death” is a photograph that was taken on July 4th, 1863 where it later was transferred on a 6 ¾” x 8 ¾” albumen silver print by Alexander Gardner and was part of a body of work O’ Sullivan exhibited in his “Grave Testimony: Photographs of the Civil War” exhibition held at the J. Paul Getty Museum.
The presence of death in the novel looms over the characters, making each of them reflect on the
Death and Reality in "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. 1930. Edited by Noel Polk. New York: Vintage, 1985. Print.
As the last story of James Joyce's short story collection, The Dubliners, "The Dead" is about a young Dubliner's one day of attending his aunts' party and his emotional changes after the party ends. In the paralyzed city the young man feels the atmosphere of death everywhere. And he often has misunderstandings with people, especially women including his wife. From the main character Gabriel's experience, we can see his personal life is in a strained circumstances. This difficult situation is probably caused by his failure to deal with the relationship with the female characters. Many events happen in the story prove that he can not get a real freedom until he understands the value of woman to improve the mutual relationship.
The Deads exemplify the patriarchal, nuclear family that has traditionally been a stable and critical feature not only of American society but of Western civilization in general. The primary institution for the reproduction and maintenance of children, ideally it provides individuals with the means for understanding their place in the world. The degeneration of the Dead family and the destructiveness of Macon's rugged individualism symbolize the invalidity of American, indeed Western, values. Morrison's depiction of this ...
Another reason why the three main characters are emotionally dead is they do not communicate with other people. Mrs. Ned Hale, when remarking on the fact that the narrator had stayed in Ethan's house said, "I don't believe but what you're the only stranger has set foot in that house for over twenty years." All living people communicate with others regularly. Not only did the main characters act like living dead, they looked liked living dead. Edith Wharton describes Zeena:
Dealing with the death of a loved one is one of life's most challenging obstacles. The pain and suffering that a person goes through cannot be fully understood unless experienced firsthand, like people that have experienced death through abortion. However, for some who have experienced death in war, death is something more like a game, where it is feared, yet made fun of in hopes of lessening the truth of reality. In the short story, “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brian, the author demonstrates his attempts to make death less real through tactics like telling stories about the dead as if they were living, joking about zombies and conceiving the dead as items instead of people.
Gass, William H. "More Deaths Than One: 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold,'." in New York 16.15 (1983): 83-84. Rpt. in Works for Students. Ed. Michael L. LaBlanc and Ira Mark Milne. Vol. 10. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Jan. 2013.
Slaughter, Carolyn N. "As I Lay Dying: Demise of Vision." American Literature 61.1 (1989): 16-30. JSTOR. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.
1 Joyce, James : The Dead , Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol.2, sixth edition
in Dublin still want to forget the problem and enjoy at least on New Years
Death is, perhaps, the most universal of themes that an author can choose to write of. Death comes to all things; not so love, betrayal, happiness, or suffering. Each death is certain, but each is also unique. In Other Voices, Other Rooms, Truman Capote addresses several deaths, and each is handled in its individual fashion. From the manner of the death to its effect on those it touches, Capote crafts vignettes within the story to give the reader a very different sense of each one.