Thursday, January 14, 2010
The Dead
The scene that stood out to me most in the The Dead is when Gabrielle is reflecting on his relationship with his wife as the couple leaves the Aunts’ dinner party (pg 183). This moment is particularly striking because it breaks up a story line convoluted with many loosely associated characters. Until this pivotal moment, the plotline follows a string of lesser relationships, focusing specifically on pleasantries and mild interactions between guests at the dinner party. These relationships are far less intense than that of Gabrielle and his wife---in comparison, the associations seem like trivial and superficial. IN contrast, when Gabrielle reflects on his marriage, the story follows a much more intense relationship, full of with emotional memories and deep secrets. However, the scene is not entirely romantic, and is tinged with sadness. For instance, page 183 reads that Gabrielle longed “to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had not quenched his soul or hers.” Although Gabrielle’s deeply personal association to his wife is supposed to be more intense in comparison to his lesser relationships to the fellow partygoers, Gabrielle comes to the conclusion that all of his associations have some shallowness. Indeed, when Gabrielle discovers that his wife as once truly in love, his perception of their relationship begins to break down. Even his marriage is superficial to some extent. In the last paragraph, I was confused as to what Joyce meant when he says: “The time had come for him to set on his journey westward.” I thought it meant that Gabrielle was re-analyzing all of his associations after the incidence with his wife. By traveling westward, I assumed Gabrielle wanted to explore and reassess Ireland and his connection to the place, as Miss Ivors suggested at the party.
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I really like and agree with your analysis of this piece of the text. I felt that up until this point Gabriel was almost emotionless, or at least hid his true feelings. It was not until this reflection that Gabriel in a sense put himself out there and opened up for the reader. Before this we saw a shy more timid form of Gabriel who worried about what those lesser of him thought. But here, he is able to portray his true emotions. It seems to me as though he almost didn't respect his marriage enough, in a sense he did not realize what he truly had until he had a thought that it could actually be gone.
ReplyDeleteI like the passage you chose to write about a lot. It highlights the differences in our thoughts about others in social setttings and in more intimate settings. In large social gatherings how we interact with people can seem trivial and silly. The escapades with the cabs clearly illustrates this. But we also have those who we feel a deep connecitons to. And our interactions with those people can sometimes mean more for us than the sum total of all our interactions at parties and other social settings. This is very well illustrates in Gabirel's interactions with his wife. As soon as he is alone with her, very few of the parties events mean anything to him and he can focus only on her.
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