Within James Joyce’s collection of short stories Dubliners, the final story is called “The Dead.” This story serves as a conclusion to all of the continual themes and plot devices found throughout the collection. With a modernist lens applied, the main protagonist, Gabriel Conroy is seen to replicate many themes found in modernist literature. Throughout this short story, James Joyce uses this main protagonist to portray modernist themes of alienation, stream of consciousness, and epiphany by accounting events in which the character finds himself alone and lost in a setting that should be otherwise favorable. Early on at the dance party is when it is seen that Gabriel Conroy first alienates himself from the other characters in the story. He
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“The Dead” contains a major epiphany at the end of the story when Gabriel learns that his wife loved someone before him and he realizes that she still loves him and would probably be with him if he hadn’t passed away. According to the article “He Saw Himself as a Ludicrous Figure”: Commodifications and Epiphanies in James Joyce’s “Araby” and “The Dead” by Jeffrey P. Kosse, the epiphany in “The Dead” is “a moment of religious-like clarity that serves to demonstrate how the boy and man in each respectively inhabit different stages of similar lives” (Kosse 1-2). The epiphany in this story changes the way the readers view Gabriel. As previously mentioned, Gabriel is sort of an elitist that believes is better than his peers. According to Kosse, the epiphany leads Gabriel to being viewed as “not only a somewhat sympathetic figure but also one who displays a sense of empathy by embracing, for the first time, the unity and mortality of all his nation and all of humanity” (Kosse 7). This quote further explains how the alienation of Gabriel occurs. At the end of the story, Gabriel decides that “the time has come for him to set out on his journey westward” (Joyce 22). Therefore, this epiphany leads to his seemingly physical alienation of himself as he gains a desire to lead the …show more content…
He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling (Joyce
“The Dead” contains a major epiphany at the end of the story when Gabriel learns that his wife loved someone before him and he realizes that she still loves him and would probably be with him if he hadn’t passed away. According to the article “He Saw Himself as a Ludicrous Figure”: Commodifications and Epiphanies in James Joyce’s “Araby” and “The Dead” by Jeffrey P. Kosse, the epiphany in “The Dead” is “a moment of religious-like clarity that serves to demonstrate how the boy and man in each respectively inhabit different stages of similar lives” (Kosse 1-2). The epiphany in this story changes the way the readers view Gabriel. As previously mentioned, Gabriel is sort of an elitist that believes is better than his peers. According to Kosse, the epiphany leads Gabriel to being viewed as “not only a somewhat sympathetic figure but also one who displays a sense of empathy by embracing, for the first time, the unity and mortality of all his nation and all of humanity” (Kosse 7). This quote further explains how the alienation of Gabriel occurs. At the end of the story, Gabriel decides that “the time has come for him to set out on his journey westward” (Joyce 22). Therefore, this epiphany leads to his seemingly physical alienation of himself as he gains a desire to lead the …show more content…
He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling (Joyce