Outline “The dead”. James Joyce

Outline “The dead”. James Joyce

James Joyce was a highly influential Irish writer, famous for his great Works such as Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake and others as Dubliners. Born in Dublin, in a low class family that had several problems, Joyce left Ireland, but at the same time, it is reflected in this work.

Dubliners is a work, consisting of fifteen stories, that shows several issues, as the description of culture and people in Dublin, childhood, teenage years, maturity and public life. All stories from this book have many things in common as the setting which is Dublin, and Irish nationalism, love and dead which are dealing along the stories.

The dead is a story that takes place at Christmas time, Epiphany, in an event that every year Miss Julia and Miss Kate organize. This celebration is considered as the greatest one, where all friends and families assist to. The two ladies waited for his nephew, Gabriel and his wife, Gretta. The night develops as every year, greeting friends and family and with long conversations, in one of them, he talks about his preference of the English language in front of the Irish language, which show us how the lack of Irish nationalism in the main character. The night was taking end when he saw how his wife was listening carefully a song with a strange expression in her face.

When they left the party and were at the hostel, Gabriel asked her what was happening, why she was absent, and she told him that when she lived in the country she had a special friend who died for her, this friend fell ill and got worse when she said him that she was moving to Dublin, finally he dead an she was remembering him because he used to sing that song. Gabriel though that he never felt something like this to a woman, he was so sad and his soul slowly vanished with the sound of the snow falling down.

The story is described in a realistic setting, a house and then in a hostel, where the characters are presented and the story takes place. The characters are described by their acts, their physical appearances, as the whole book Joyce describes every single detail to make it a realistic work, as we can see how Ireland is described perfectly.

The story is written in first person, Joyce uses words that will represents the speech that every character will have, with this element he describes characters as we can see the level of education by the use of different structures. He focus on what all characters think, the story starts with Lily’s thoughts in the conversation that she has with Gabriel, then during the story we see all thoughts of every character.

In conclusion, this story seems boring because of its details on all elements, but at the same time, is interesting, the way in which Joyce uses language as an identification of personality of their characters.

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