To best understand this, one must examine the text and Gabriel’s actions within it. Throughout “The Dead,” Gabriel works to live an admirable and generous life for those around him, striving to be personable, respected, and refined. However, occasionally, light shines through the cracks in his character. In his first interaction with Lily, when he asks her about possible wedding plans, she replies “with great bitterness.” Gabriel is caught off guard; his first response is to “reaffirm the cultured, bourgeois vision he would like to project to the world” (Pecora 238). He blushes and feels “as if he had made a mistake,” turning away from her to shine his patent leather shoes. Here the reader is given the first physical description of Gabriel,
