Dead Sea

“Eveline’s Visitant” by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and “The Dead” by James Joyce are both short stories that show strong examples of a “haunting”. A haunting is something or someone from a past time that reoccurs in appearance or in thought, usually bad or regrettable. Although both stories represent a haunting throughout the story, each author efficiently portrays two separate types of a haunting: one being a ghost, and one being a past. Braddon’s short story “Eveline’s Visitant” tells a tale of…

Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist of sorts within “The Dead,” is noted as the “favourite” nephew by his aunts (Joyce 152). Gabriel therefore served as the patriarch of the family after many of his elder relatives have passed away. His mother, Ellen, is noted by his aunts to have been “the brains carrier of…

Throughout his short story “A Little Cloud,” James Joyce considers the ramifications of remaining sedentary in Dublin through his characters Little Chandler and Ignatius Gallaher. That Little Chandler and Gallaher seem so antithetical, despite their proximity and similar upbringings, invites the reader to question whether Joyce intends to insinuate that success is only possible outside of Dublin, and that ambition and Celtic nationalism are incongruous. Having left Ireland at twenty years old,…

James Joyce’s Dubliners, a collection of short stories, examines Irish life in the late nineteeth century and early twentieth century through the use of complex characters and multifacteted plots. Three of these stories, “Ivy Day in the Committee Room,” “A Mother,” and “Grace,” focuse exclusively on public life. In Joyce’s eyes, public life in Dublin was run by politics, art, and religion. While each of these stories takes on a different subtopic of public life, they share an overarching theme.…

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…

Watatsumi-no-Mikoto, god of the sea. […] the inhabitants should be devout worshippers of this god. They are forever praying for calm seas…" (4, par. 2, chp.1) The islanders are so gracious for the ocean, that they made a shrine of a sea god to represent the seas that surround the island. The islanders have been devoted to their faith in order to receive a sense of reassurance. They pray in hopes to please the sea god that they worship in order to gain pleasant seas to sail on. The action of…

paralysis, as well as the symbols of yellow and brown, and the motif of death. His last story The Dead is the be-all end-all of the collection. It is regarded as perhaps Joyce’s greatest story, and it encompasses all his previous…

Based on the reading The Dead by James Joyce, men are being categorized as the ultimate authority that has to deal with certain precautions and always be aware and is responsible for society’s behavior. Gabriel Conroy, the main character, is having a nicely dinner with his aunts Kate and Julia while having as company other neighbors and friends. This event, made possible by the two aunts, causes certain discomfort around the main character and a few of their guests as they start discussing…

“The Calm” by Sean O’Brien is a four part metaphor representing the infinite serenity of the ocean and the stars as well as the revolving of a lighthouse in comparison to the people who have fallen from the light. In the first three stanzas we see beautiful metaphors comparing the rolling of the waves to the movement of the stars and, the revolving of the lighthouse to the tilt of the harbor. The poem continues to describe the inhabitants of a nearby bar who have fallen from stardom, sharing a…

In Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle readers follow many characters throughout the Earthsea. In each of these stories there is one, shared constant: the sea. Throughout the books characters leave their homes and set off to face the unknown. Le Guin uses the sea to represent the unknown. We see this when a number of characters, including Ged, Arha and Arren, leave safety and land behind and take off into the unknown carried by the mage or earthwind. In her books, Ursula Le Guin says that to…