James Joyce’s story “The Dead” has a tremendous impact on the readers, especially those who are familiar with the political situation in Ireland at the time about which the Joyce wrote the final story in Dubliners. In exploring the meaning of James Joyce’s long short-story, “The Dead”, there are many critical approaches to take. Each approach gives readers a lens, a set of guidelines through which to examine and express ideas of the meaning of “The Dead. ” Joyce himself said that the idea of paralysis was his intended them of all the stories in The Dubliners of which “The Dead” is the final story.
Of all critical approaches, reader response works best for me. This approach examines the images, symbols, point-of-view, characterization and setting of “The Dead” in such a way as to reveal the theme of paralysis that Joyce intended. The two characters that appeal to me are, Gabriel and his wife Gretta who are invited every year to a family gathering by Gabriels two aunts on New Years eve. Gabriel, who is a university professor, does not want to be identified with Ireland. He wants to be identifies as a citizen of the world. His arrogance is revealed in his interaction with others.
A primary example would be the way he treats his wife Gretta as an object. As Peter J. Rabinowitz informs one that in reader response criticism the “activity of reading always alters the text at hand. Unless we are limiting ourselves to reading in the sense of uninflected recitation, reading is never a passive activity to which the reader contributes nothing. In the reader response criticism, reading is a text in which individual experiences bear on the subject. Every individual interprets the text differently due to one having different experiences that determines the interpretation of the text. 38)
The images reflect Gabriels ego in a sense, at the same for his marital relationship, and at the end death, which may not be physical but spiritual. Gabriel who is tallish and stout symbolizes authority and also wants to be perfect for all times. He has a mental block, which makes him believe that he is more superior and different than others are. He’s built a screen around himself, which stops him from identifying himself with the “Common Man. ” The “polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. 23,24).
This image perhaps tells us that the glasses are the screen that partition his vision from the vision of others. Joyce’s intended theme of paralysis is exemplified in the symbolization of snow. In the story, snow has a major role as it symbolizes the political situation at the same time where everything was cold and dead due to the political uncertainty at the time. Snow also plays a major role as it interprets the reader to be on the alert, as things at the end are not going to be as smooth as Gabriel had predicted.
This seen in the shift of mood when after the party had concluded, Gabriel and his wife are heading towards the hotel and he’s in a very romantic mood and looking forward to a night of romance. On the way, snow suggests that things are not going to be so smooth. “The morning was still dark. A dark yellow light brooded over the houses and the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy underfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on parapets of the quay and on the area railings” (51). The snow at the end of the story takes a different form.
As when Gabriel realizes that his wife Gretta has really been thinking about someone else while he thought that all her thought’s would be about him, especially at the moment where he is in a romantic state of mind. His world comes hurdling down when Gretta informs him that she has been thinking about her life when she was an adolescent and had a seventeen year old boy who was madly in love with her. Despite the fact that he was suffering from tuberculosis, he waited in the rain just to have a glimpse of her. This aggravated his condition and eventually he died.
I think he died for me. ” “A vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer as if, at that hour when he had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was coming against him, gathering forces against him in it’s vague world” (57). At this moment Gabriel realizes that he has failed as a husband and that his ideas about love and relationships were all wrong and he was not as perfect as he thought he was. “A man had died for her sake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life” (58).
At this moment when he looks out the window and sees the snow, it is not slushy anymore but beautiful. He perhaps wants to go outside and disunite himself from everyone by getting lost in the snow. Also, as snow is water, which can be a symbol of rebirth, as it can also be implied that at that very moment he was reborn. “A few light taps upon the pane made him turn towards the window. ” “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead” (59).
This can also signify Joyce’s intended theme of paralysis as Gabriel is paralyzed emotionally, as he does not know what is going to happen next. In conclusion the narrators attitude towards the events is perhaps how he wants the reader to interpret the events. The narrator perhaps wants to tell the reader despite all the tension at that time, the people in Dublin still want to forget the problem and enjoy at least on New Years Day where it can be with their loved ones to relax.