"The Dead" Reflection

As I was reading "The Dead," I found myself wondering when the relevance of the title would emerge. The first 30 pages or so give no indication of why this title might be appropriate for the story. In fact, the introduction of death through Gretta's story about Michael Furey does not appear until page 188, only three or four pages from the story's end. When it does become apparent, however, it occurs in a few powerful pages of text further examining the relationship between Gretta and Gabriel and eventually life itself. I was particularly struck by the shift Gabriel experiences in his feelings toward his wife. Joyce portrays this masterfully, beginning on page 183 when Gabriel is watching his wife walk ahead of him and feeling intense feelings of desire and love, or so he thinks at the time. Joyce describes Gabriel's arms "trembling with desire" (185) and his overwhelming desire to be close to his wife and reignite the fire between them. Gretta, though, has other things on her mind, and her disclosure of what she's feeling triggers the change in her husband's emotions. Upon hearing his wife's tale about the young man who died for her sake, Gabriel falls into a meditation on love and life. He considers just how strongly Michael Furey must have felt for Gretta in order to have died for her, concluding that he himself has never felt such emotion, even for her. This shows a distinct reversal of his feelings, from full of lust for his wife to concluding that he has never felt love for her, now that the story of Michael has illuminated for him what love truly is. Gabriel finally begins musing on his existence as a whole, seeing his fading identity in comparison with the dead, seeing the entire world as dissipating. The significance of the title here resounds in full force, as the story draws to a close that questions the permanence of life and the world. The penultimate paragraph provides a dizzying portrayal of Gabriel picturing the souls of the dead and imagining his own mortality. This gives way to the concluding paragraph, a beautiful and rather haunting description of the snow falling over all of Ireland and eventually falling through the universe as a whole. While the title's importance may not be apparent in the earlier section of the story, it resonates with immense gravity at the end, as the story ends with Gabriel's transformed thoughts on life and its inevitable conclusion.