James Joyce's The Dead - Failure to Create Wholeness from Gnomon

The Failure to Create Wholeness from Gnomon in The Dead

There is little doubt in anyone's mind that Gabriel's speech in "The Dead" is a failure. It is harder to understand what exactly he was trying to accomplish. The almost archaic style contradicts the lighthearted content, and what we are left with is a rambling oration which seems to produce nothing. Reading through the speech, one can not help but be struck by its

wondrously odd and seemingly antiquated phraseology:

[Let us] still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead. . .whose

fame the world will not willingly let die.

[T]o go on bravely with our work among the living.

We are met here as friends. . . (202-203)

"Those dead," "work among the living," "we are met here as friends" - not exactly the tone which one would expect from an informal after-dinner speech in the midst of a party. The question is, "Where would one expect to hear this kind of speech?" The answer is simple: at a funeral, of course.

Not just any sort of funeral, however. One in particular comes to mind:

We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. . . The world will little not nor long remember what we say her, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work.

. . (261)

In its sentiments and even in its diction it is astonishing how alike Gabriel's speech is to Licoln's Gettysburg Address. Now before you throw down this paper in disgust let me make it clear that I will not be suggesting that Joyce tried to transcribe The Gettysburg Address into Dubliners. I do think, however, that both speeches come from a certain tradition of speaking, the funeral oration or epitaphioi; and understanding how Gabriel's speech follows or strays from the tradition which it is

emulating helps in grasping the reasons behind and consequences of its failure.

Lincoln's funeral oration is the only English example of a specifically Athenian phenomenon. In classical Athens, it was customary for an elected official to give a speech at the funeral for those soldiers who lost their lives during the previous year.