Three Notes on Joyce

Abstract

There are two radically different ways of reading The Dead", one as the coda of a novel called Dubliηers and the other as an independent short story. Either way, T he Dead" culminates in the protagonists timeless moment of vision. The meaning of the vision represented by one camp, however, sharply differs from that represented by the other. The coda camp tends to interpret the final snow vision as Gabriel's self-identification with the dead. The fourteen epiphanies of paralysis or perversion which preceded Gabrielsmake it hard to interpret it otherwise. Meanwhile the independent story camp asserts that the story is the story of maturation and that the snow vision is a rebirth experience. The Dead" is a new inclusion to the already organized manuscript book of 1906, which may demand a new approach. Before we decide which interpretaion is more relevant, or which reading is preferable, we should follow the chain of events closely. Gabriel, a self-complacent Dublin middle class intellectual, attends the annual dance party of his old aunts. It is Christmas time, a time of celebration of the birth. But the opening sentence: Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. together with the succinct title strikes us with strong connotations of death. Lily is the flower of funeral as well as purity, and the girl who carries the name is run off her feet literally, not figuratively.