James Joyce Quarterly (2010) - "The Dead" Just Won't Stay Dead
Details
- article: "The Dead" Just Won't Stay Dead
- author(s): Jim LeBlanc
- journal: James Joyce Quarterly (2010)
- issue: volume 48, issue 1, pages 27-39
- DOI: 10.1353/jjq.2010.0030
- journal ISSN: 0021-4183
- publisher: University of Tulsa
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Authors, Death & dying, English Literature, Existentialism, Garry M. Leonard, Haunting, James Joyce, Literary criticism, Phenomenology, Psychology, Self, Short stories, Slavoj Žižek, The Dead (Dubliners), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Twentieth Century
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Abstract
Although James Joyce's tale is strewn from beginning to end with references to death, dying, and the deceased, the most compelling and haunting element in "The Dead" is undoubtedly Gretta Conroy's poignant memory of her teenage love, Michael Furey, and the effect that her tearful sharing of this recollection with her husband Gabriel has on the couple. Like most of the stories in Dubliners, "The Dead" concludes with its protagonist feeling trapped by a situation seemingly beyond his control. This ending is, moreover, tantalizingly indeterminate for it is impossible to know how Gabriel will go on with his life, a life in which a dead boy, about whom Gabriel has never before known, will forever play a role, at least insofar as his relationship with Gretta is concerned. The atmosphere of the story's conclusion suggests suicide, at least metaphorically, or perhaps the very late hour and the "faintly falling" snow that Gabriel "sleepily" contemplates in the final paragraph signal only the onset of an exhausted, and possibly revitalizing, winter's slumber. Here, LeBlanc explores the existential psychological nature of this haunting, and the possibility of mastering or transcending this situation.
