The Dead

One question that kept coming up throughout the story for me was what it meant to be alive or dead. There was the literal meaning, of course, in reference to Michael Furey, Gabriel's mother, and others, but there was also death in the figurative sense, namely, in regards to Gabriel.

The passage where this all seems to come together for me is when Gabriel is in the hotel watching Gretta and remarking that she was not the beautiful girl that she once was; as if she died from her former life, and is in a sense, dead, as Gabriel is. The difference is that while Gretta (and Michael) were once alive, Gabriel feels he has never been.