Death (and resurrection?)

The Dead

The cosmic imagery of ‘The Dead’ is also interesting to study as is (still from the point of view of style) the superb pastiche of ‘after dinner’ speeches. All the clichés are there, from the humility of the beginning (‘a task for which my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate’) to the triteness of the final toast, not forgetting the couplet on Irish hospitality, the opposition between generations, the mythological allusions or such hackneyed images as ‘our path through life is strewn with many sad memories’. The passage is a significant one, to be compared, in its insincerity, to the sincerity of the last two pages.

Finally the essential role of Gabriel(and Gretta))should not blind the reader to the other values of the story, which is also a piece of social criticism, a picture of musical life in Dublin at the turn of the century, a portrait of other characters, some deceased, some moribund, some living-dead, and a reshuffling of many of the themes already used in the previous stories, including the theme of money, financial decline, class distinctions, and so on.

© Librairie du LIban.

York Notes, James Joyce Dubliners, notes by Patrick Rafroidi. Longman York Press, Beirut 1985.