The Process of Self-Awareness of Gabriel Throughout someone’s life, they experience the moment that they realize their identity and self-awareness, and the surround settings and people around them can change and influence their identity. Gabriel who is the main character of The Dead by James Joyce shows the process of his change in development of new self-awareness through Greta’s confession. The time Gabriel was spending with Greta at the Gresham hotel was the conclusion part of The Dead that shows how Gabriel reached his self-perception. Greta was absorbed in deep thought on Michael, and Gabriel was attracted to that image of her admiring the past love. However, his pride got injured when she talked about her past story about Michael.
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Epiphany is a religious term that means “A revelatory manifestation of a divine being or a sudden insight or intuitive understanding” (Webster 384). Lionel Trilling, also, defines Epiphany as literary device that one experienced something unexpected on someone or something, and it changes one’s understanding of someone or something. This unexpected event becomes most important and effective element of the story (98). Joyce used this religious term in literature that he wanted to show the common and momentary experience in life affects the makes one to realize some kind of spiritual meaning of it. Epiphany is in harmony with the theme of the novel that present the paralysis, and, at the same time, it becomes the start of the awakening. Characters in the story realize their moral and spiritual paralysis state through a sudden …show more content…
In the conversation with wife, in the lost in meditation, and in his unconscious trip to the west, readers can observe and sympathy his process of change. Gabriel’s last view was not an outside view but inner consciousness, and it shows his stream of consciousness. His conscious is traveling to the west which represents the death and life. The snow that was falling during the party time was the image of the death while the snow at the end reflects Gabriel’s escape from the ole ego as it melts. Gabriel’s vision was not mentioned clearly, but it changed positively. Gabriel’s realized the true value of the human, and it gives the hope to the people in Dublins because it tells them that fate does not change by resignation but by the conscious
Epiphany is a religious term that means “A revelatory manifestation of a divine being or a sudden insight or intuitive understanding” (Webster 384). Lionel Trilling, also, defines Epiphany as literary device that one experienced something unexpected on someone or something, and it changes one’s understanding of someone or something. This unexpected event becomes most important and effective element of the story (98). Joyce used this religious term in literature that he wanted to show the common and momentary experience in life affects the makes one to realize some kind of spiritual meaning of it. Epiphany is in harmony with the theme of the novel that present the paralysis, and, at the same time, it becomes the start of the awakening. Characters in the story realize their moral and spiritual paralysis state through a sudden …show more content…
In the conversation with wife, in the lost in meditation, and in his unconscious trip to the west, readers can observe and sympathy his process of change. Gabriel’s last view was not an outside view but inner consciousness, and it shows his stream of consciousness. His conscious is traveling to the west which represents the death and life. The snow that was falling during the party time was the image of the death while the snow at the end reflects Gabriel’s escape from the ole ego as it melts. Gabriel’s vision was not mentioned clearly, but it changed positively. Gabriel’s realized the true value of the human, and it gives the hope to the people in Dublins because it tells them that fate does not change by resignation but by the conscious