James Joyce, The Dead (1914): Character Distinction and Riot of Emotions

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to grab the attention and focus to a very interesting and particular point by analyzing and giving emphasis to a highlighted character, whose name is Gabriel Conroy, in a fascinating short story from 1914 called The Dead from the volume Dubliners by James Joyce. Things that set him apart from other characters are stated as well as his internal examination procedure, where he explored his way of behaving that culminates, at the end, in a state of epiphany that makes him introspective.

Countless sources are explored, both digital and physical form, in order to examine different perspectives. With this, we tried to get straight to the point by approaching this topic the best way we could, providing the information that we found relevant. We hope, by the exposition of this arguments, to clarify the best way our main points and objectives that are to give an alternative analysis of this main character, in order to make you reflect and examine more profoundly and differently his form of being and what consequences this way of behaving has, giving total focus and attention to his final emotions.

Keywords: The Dead; Character Distinction; Self-Realization; Paralysis; Criticism.

Introduction

Understanding the fact that we are mortal beings and the way in which we live our lives are important things. Also, that fact that we are different from one another is something that we need to keep in our minds. Many topics of this short story are linked to the emotions, since we can relate to them making this research even more interesting and curious.
This essay is divided into two parts. In the first one we concern about the main things that identified Gabriel Conroy, namely the fact that he was such an isolated character due to his psychological traits, in addition to his loss of connection with Ireland for several reasons. To get into this story, since he plays a main role, we need to keep in mind his behavior (the way he is, acts and behaves). His way of behaving really affects him emotionally and limits his actions. In the second, we analyze about how he initially had "another face" and increasingly comes to a sudden late-night self-realization or epiphany that makes him see life from a completely different angle. He examines his all whole existence and is surprised about the results of those considerations. He is then aware of everything that paralyzed him, realizing that he was worried about things that he should not.

1. Character Distinction
1.1. Social Isolation

Gabriel Conroy arrived late to the party and blamed his wife Gretta for their lateness by telling everyone: "But they forget my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress her" (Joyce, 1914, p. 2), when in fact, it was Gabriel obstinacy fault. The initial impression that we get from Gabriel is that he is rude and reluctant to assume his errors. He did not confess the true reason why they came up late. A few moments later, he attempted to talk with Lily, and, when she said his surname in an supposed improper way, he "smiled" and "glanced" (Joyce, 1914, p. 3) at her. When we say Conroy, we get two syllables but apparently, with her accent and "uneducated" way of talking she, apparently, gave it three. She had been the caretaker's daughter since she was a child, yet Gabriel did not know her age and asked her if she was going to school or if she was planning to get married soon. Lily realized that he was just making conversation and said to him in a resentful way: "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (Joyce 1914, p. 3). Lily's response embarrassed Gabriel making him to blush. Instead of apologizing or clearing out what he meant, Gabriel rapidly concluded their dialogue by offering Lily a Christmas tip. He blamed his honored education for his lack of ability to relate and communicate with servants like Lily. His inclination to let money speak for him let us know that he depends on the comfort of his class to maintain distance. This conversation shows that Gabriel did not know how to respond to a return answer since he always had to have the control over everything, otherwise he would not know how to act but after all he could not avoid such challenges as the party was going on. 

He was distant from everyone, even from his wife since he had not given her attention during the whole party. There is a quote that shows this idea of distancing: "A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. "(Joyce, 1914, p. 37). He could not recognize her and was not conscient on how "far" she was.

There is also an instant where he found himself paired up with Miss Ivors, a longtime friend and fellow university instructor. She called him a "West Briton" (Joyce, 1914, p. 14) for writing reviews for a newspaper that supported British Unionism. She tried to corner him about his indifference to his country and he defended himself by exclaiming that he was sick and tired of Ireland, surprising her and himself with his not well-thought-of response and his loss of control. After it, he went to one side and interacted with some other people but was not able to forget this dialogue.

He interpreted these moments of communication as a failure. This gave us the information about his expectations of trying to communicate with everyone in his discourse. He was an insecure person since he was afraid to fail and was always worrying about his eventual speech. 
According to Lucente (1983):
"Gabriel was not used to examine the annoyingly difficult and threatening elements of personal confrontation, but rather to round them off through a process as an out of abstractions and to reincorporate them into a vision he can accept and control even more than if that vision is in some ways a negative one." (p. 281). When he had a conflict, he would rather to talk it through in his own mind and to find some techniques to feel fine about it, instead of trying to find out what was actually behind it and solve it, like in social distancing.

We believe that his elevated, cultured, and different use of the language are some of the motives that isolated him.

1.2. Loss of Bound With the Irish Patrimony

Gabriel first thing to do when he arrived was to remove all the snow from his galoshes. In Dublin, these are seen with the same suspicion as all continental things. This, in our opinion, shows his alienation from the norms of the culture. Also, we noticed by his conversation with Miss Ivors that he preferred to go cycling to another country claiming that he wanted to: "keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change." (Joyce, 1914, p. 15), rather than visiting his own country.

We got the perception, when he mentioned: "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!" (Joyce, 1914, p. 16), shows how distant he felt from his own nation. We assume that it was difficult for him to understood that someone as literate as him, like Miss Ivors, could be so strongly linked to Ireland.

In the following occasion where he gave his speech, he would have is say regarding to Aunt Kate and Julia: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humor, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hyper educated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack." (Joyce, 1914, p. 19). This was for Miss Ivors (he was able to say it when she left the party), but, we think that he could identify himself with this due to his loss of connection with Ireland.

This speech was paradoxical for numerous reasons. He pointed out to his country, yet, it is explicit that he did not feel much patriotism regarding to his own country. This came from the denunciation of Miss Ivors, who entitled him a "West Briton", a denomination of abuse for an Irish Unionist. Besides that, Gabriel also headed to the Irish generosity, which in circumstances of British control is incongruous by letting themselves stay under a submission state.
Later on, when his wife stood immobile on the stairs, someone closed the door, and then, at that moment, he identified that song as in: "the old Irish tonality and the singer seemed uncertain both of his words and his voice." (Joyce, 1914, p. 38) This, once more, suggested a loss of contact with his Irish hereditament.

2. Riot of Emotions

2.1. Epiphany: Self-Realization

Gabriel saw his wife Gretta standing still at the top of the stairs, with her fixed, and non- blinking eyes in the darkness, while listening to a music. She seemed to him like a picture he would name Distant Music if he was a painter (he was not aware at all about how distant they were from each other). When the music stopped, Gretta remained apart and introspective. Already at the hotel, Gabriel got mad due to Gretta's behavior. She did not share his passionate inclinations and broke into tears. She admitted to him that Bartell's singing of "The Lass of Aughrim" remembered her a former lover, Michael Furey, who used to sing that song to her in their youth in Galway. He died with a burning passion for her after he struggled through the rain to visit her.

Gabriel remained unmoving and wordless as he found out that his marriage was not based on true passion and that he could not feel what that boy felt and could not also make Gretta feel what Furey made her sense. He then experienced an unexpected and significant realization:
"He saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror." (Joyce, 1914, p. 48). He felt that he did not lived during all those years and restated the thoughts that he had when he previously looked himself in the mirror.

This moment of self-understanding was a shocking occurrence. It affected his sense of rationality, but, at that important time Gabriel was able to experience genuine feelings of love and understanding:

"Her voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be to try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands[...]it did not respond to his touch but he continued to caress it just as he had caressed her first letter to him that spring morning." (Joyce, 1914, p. 48)

He came up with the conclusion that the dead boy was victorious over him in relation to Gretta's love. He looked out through the window into the darkness as he watched the snow falling over Michael Furey's tomb, he was then forced to realize how he has been living as if he was dead and that the snow falls equally upon the living and the dead, that is, everyone has the same final fate.

Caporaletti's (1997) study observed the following:

"When the passionate intensity of Gretta's recollection forces Gabriel to recognize his own emotional limitations and shallowness, he also perceives the essential humanity that unites him to the others[...] Gabriel, who at the beginning appears isolated in a present of selfishness and hypocrisy, and is initially projected toward the East in a symbolic rejection of his personal and national past, turns in the end toward the West, yielding to the sense of universal communion that, beyond human limits, united the living and the dead." (p. 411).
Conroy was forced to realize he had been living in a state of constant paralysis by sticking to his own world and even became a complete stranger to himself. As the narrative comes to an end and after finding out about Furey, he reached out the conclusion that it was better to take risks, than to little by little dwindle away his life. He started to observe his life in a completely different shape and became aware that, after all, he is not that different from everyone else.

2.2. Paralysis

Gabriel Conroy was always troubling about the impression that others would get from him, being something that would prevent him of doing anything worthwhile. He was always worrying about his speech and if including a poem would make it sound too intellectual for the audience. Also, he wanted to kiss Gretta but he never gets to do it. 

Nevertheless, curiously, while the snow seemed to cover all of Ireland, insinuating that the entire country was under this state of frozen spiritual paralysis, there was some expectations given by Gabriel's last thoughts, as humans might free themselves from this state of paralysis like we mentioned before: "It is better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age." (Joyce, 1914, p. 51).
The snow plays a main role as a considerable symbol in the short story, being something that connects both the living and the dead; even Michael Furey himself. In the last paragraph, this general idea is highlighted and takes proportions:

"Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland[...]It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. 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." (Joyce, 1914, p. 51)

This party event that involves the whole story was embodied on the numb type of procedures. The events were the same every year, there is an presumed routine at this happening that they were powerless to break from the occupations that they were close with, so they lived life without new experiences, disconnected from the world.

Conclusion

The evidences above show that Gabriel, at first, seemed self-centered, rude and hypocritical. Turns out in the end, that he enters in an inward change when his wife tells him about her youth love. This makes him examine his own and human life in its integrity as a whole, being suddenly aware that he had not lived but only remained alive in a state of constant paralysis. He cared too much about the impression that others would have of him and felt uncomfortable when someone confronted him. Instead of defending himself he would rather to escape from the conflicts. Conroy recognized that the snow would fall equitably and faintly upon all the living and the dead, that is, we all have the same fate, so we should enjoy life while we can. He, after all, gets the perception that, he is not that distinct from everyone else.
That state of epiphany and paralysis made us reflect that all these ongoings are there to reveal everything that was wrong with the society. They were stopped in time, deprived from new experiences and from the rest of the world. Also, through this analysis, we understood that the title is then set as a challenge to us as to how we live the few days that we are given before we die.

Combining these ideas stands crucial. They are related to each other internally since his way of being (acts) is what leads him to his final condition (consequences), being determining to understand it. We see it like a glass of water that overflows.

One thing is certain, Gabriel lived as if he was paralyzed but the story leaves a possibility: will Gabriel change his character and embrace life?

Bibliography/Webgraphy

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