For
this particular short story, The Dead,
I found it difficult to just stick to one point without involving other parts
and themes. In order to clearly connect different sides of the story that were
somewhat intertwined with one another, I tried to elaborate the analysis in a “planned
stream-of-consciousness” style. Although some parts do not necessarily seem to
be explaining the same matter, I believe that they are all heading towards the
same goal at the end, in the right order. From style, through character
relations, epiphany, and to snow, there is a subtle, yet significant connection
among them that eventually leads people to the understanding of the message in The Dead.
James
Joyce’s writing style seems to have strengthened the message conveyed through
the story. The most prominent style found in the text is free indirect
discourse, which involves both a character’s speech and the narrator’s comments
or presentation. It makes indistinguishable the thoughts of the narrator and
those of a character. In The Dead,
Joyce’s voice resonates with the characters’ voices. Because the voices all
differ from one another in terms of people’s characteristics, this technique
enables the author to hide his existence in the story by making the lines sound
as if they were said by the speakers themselves, and thus helps readers to concentrate
in/sympathize with the unique characters.
For
instance, the first sentence, “Lily was literally run off her feet,” creates awkwardness
due to the use of the word “literally.” Lily cannot possibly be run off her
feet “literally,” but “figuratively.” The word "literally" is a
solecism that the uneducated housemaid Lily might mistakenly use instead of "absolutely".
Moreover, the third sentence of the story, "It was well for her she had
not to attend to the ladies also", similarly adopts the manner of speech regarding
how Lily's social status would use: "well for her." On the other hand,
the lines, "Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her
Academy piece, full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing room,”
and “he liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he
doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged
Mary Jane to play something" bear rather refined structures and diction, revealing
the high-quality education that Gabriel probably would have received.
As
it can be expressed and understood effectively through the free indirect
speeches, Gabriel is seemingly an intelligent guy who is welcomed by the aunts
as their “favorite nephew.” Yet, he lacks sensitivity and has a very
restrictive personality. Although he considers the party as a somewhat cold and
oppressing routine, he is actually the one who has overly restrained
personality. With his restrictions on himself, he is disconnected from the
people around him; at the dinner table, Gabriel "set to his supper and
took no part in the conversation." That "Gabriel hardly heard what
she said" adds even more. Since he is a relative of the musical Morkan aunts
and has married to the deeply passionate Gretta, it is inferred that Gabriel might
have once lived a harmonious life along with the world around him. Now,
however, he seems to have buried his emotions underneath a snow-like blanket of
propriety prevalent in the society.
Throughout
the story, his refined, yet insensitive and controlled personality brings him
troubles with two different ladies at the party. Lily becomes incensed when Gabriel
inoffensively suggests that “[they’ll] be going to [her] wedding one of these
fine days with [her] young man.” As she replies “with great bitterness,” he
gets shocked and takes it as a challenge of his confidence. That Gabriel tries
to handle this situation by “[taking] a coin rapidly from his pocket” shows his
shortage of sensitivity and his belief that he can cover up things with
materialistic attitude. Then, while dancing, he encounters another woman called
Molly Ivors, his former alum, who is a loyal supporter of their country Ireland.
After continuously being asked about his interest in Ireland, Gabriel suddenly
conveys that he is sick of his country (Gabriel is probably a representation of James Joyce himself). When Miss Ivors rebukes him for his
lack of patriotism, he begins to struggle with the idea of freedom and
embracing himself or the culture. These two women give him a mental disturbance
in his restricted mind.
The
lady who absolutely contradicts Gabriel in personality is, however, not anyone
else but his own wife Gretta. Unlike Gabriel, who is restricting himself within
the underlying rules, Gretta has a remarkably free spirit; “she’d walk home in
the snow if she were let.” She is not glad about how Gabriel recommends her to “put
on her galoshes whenever it’s wet underfoot.” Gabriel feels confused when this
seemingly strong woman gets melancholy when she hears Mr. D’Arcy singing The Lass of Aughrim. On the way back
home, wondering why she seems so nostalgic and sentimental, Gabriel tries to
set a rather romantic atmosphere, but fails. Hearing about the true reason why Gretta
feels melancholy, Gabriel becomes highly uncomfortable and irritated at first. After
Gretta falls asleep, he stares at the room window and thinks about his wife,
Michael Furey, and himself. While listening to the snow hitting the window, however,
he suddenly realizes what he means to his wife and the complicated relationship
between the existences of our beings: the moment of epiphany. He is alive but
dead in Gretta’s heart; Michael Furey is dead but alive in her heart. The
coexistence of death and life, and the ambiguity of the line between them
strikes Gabriel’s mind.
In
terms of compatibility of death and life, snow is a strikingly accurate
representation (and an extended metaphor) of the whole epiphany. During winter,
snow suffocates life from vegetation, representing death of life forms. When
spring returns, however, snow is the source that has aided the cycle of life
and given a chance for new growth. This coexistence of the directly opposite
concepts, death and rebirth, is the fundamental realization that Gabriel goes
through while staring at the snow. This concept of snow has appeared several
times in different classics. In Iliad,
Homer epitomizes how snow covers all the mountains and stops winds in the
middle of a bloody war. The Trojan War is now happening silently among the “sensitively
dead” people in Ireland; Zeus pours snow down to people in order to show the “self-arrow,”
which in this case, can be the epiphany that Gabriel has. Furthermore, as snow is
something that falls to the “coexisting” and “complete” “now and then,” in St.
Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, snow
in The Dead is both a coffin for the
paralyzed, “dead,” Irish people, and an overcoat for the alive, relieving the
whole universe and making everyone’s life new.
After
finishing the story, I could think of my own moment of epiphany in my short
life.
Expecting a successful, cliché performance that
frequently came out in famous college essays, I confidently stepped into the
stage. As I was waiting for beginning sign from Juny, the drummer, my heart
beat like an unrestrained drum. My fingers on the keyboard, too, waited eagerly
to produce perfect music.
“Tick,
tick, tick”
First with David’s leading guitar melody, the song
seemed to be flowing mellifluously. Actually, it did go well, very well, until
I started to miss beats for some reason. I played as I practiced before, but
strangely it did not fit within others’ sounds. Without any other choice, I
kept playing in my own way, not listening to other instruments.
Despite my earnest wish, not only my band members
but also the whole crowd soon noticed my failing rhythm. For the next three
minutes or so, I was trapped in the state of oh-my-gosh-what-should-I-do-now
mood, with my fingers still playing my own rhythm. I could hear some hiss from
the crowd. The more I tried to catch the right flow, the more awkward our
melody became.
And this disastrous failure was my first performance
for FITM, the school rock band.
Right after I went downstage, I still did not know
why I was making a cacophony for the entire song though I practiced hard. Hearing
my band members crying, however, I realized what the real problem was. All the
past memories passed like a long panorama.
I had played piano since I was six years old, and
for almost twelve years. For this reason, I was confident to be selected as the
keyboardist of FITM, a school rock band in KMLA. Yet I didn’t realize that
there would be some difference playing piano alone and playing keyboard in a
band.
Becoming part of a band, however, was a completely
different job, in which my sound had to flow with other sounds to make a
perfect harmony. I often missed rhythms while practicing, but I was not
cautious enough to catch the significance of playing together, fitting into the
same rhythm. I never even gave a try to listen to other people’s sound; I was
just busy making my own sound heard most loudly in the song; I did not
recognize how even one offbeat was enough to ruin the whole song as a cacophony.
Among all, the biggest mistake was that I was not conscious of what a “band”
meant.
Thanks to that huge disaster, I could eventually answer
why I wanted to play in a band, not alone; it was that I wanted to make a
harmony with others, not that I wanted to hear my sound only. As soon as I
realized that, I stopped playing keyboard and started listening to the sounds
that other instruments were making, literally trying to “feel in the music.”
Paying attention to the subtle difference in rhythm enabled me to find the
right place for my sounds to join the other sounds. Concentrating for several
times, I could eventually fit into the harmonious rhythm and create melodious
songs.
As I paid triple attention to the “harmony” while
practicing, the second performance we had at the Christmas party was successful
enough to make me cry after finishing it. Surprisingly, I could find every
other member crying with me, this time crying for a different reason. We were
happy to figure out that all of us, including me, were trying to achieve the
same thing: listening to each other’s sound. The cry I heard after the failing
performance helped me to not only feel in the music, but feel in each other. This
experience had a great influence on my perspective of interacting with
everything around me.
With
his particular style and techniques, James Joyce conveys his impression of
Ireland, especially Dublin, as the heart of paralysis, where people are alive
but dead, and dead but alive. The concept of compatibility of death and rebirth
is expressed through the protagonist’s unique personality along with the bizarre
situations that he experiences, and the extended metaphor of snow. Reading the
last line this story itself was also an epiphany for me. Thanks to James Joyce
(& Mr. Garrioch), I had a chance to recall a significant moment in my life.
This remembrance not only gave me an idea of what I learned before, but also
reminded me to always keep that lesson I got from the epiphany moment, even in
the future.
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