{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"166: James Joyce: "The Dead"","description":"This week on StoryWeb: James Joyce\u2019s short story \u201cThe Dead.\u201d James Joyce\u2019s \u201cThe Dead\u201d is widely considered to be his best short story, called by the New York Times \u201cjust about the finest short story in the English language" and by T.S. Eliot as one of the greatest short stories ever written. The storyline is simple enough: a long-married Irish couple -- Gretta and Gabriel Conroy \u2013 attend a lavish dinner party thrown by his aunts in celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). At the party, they each have a variety of conversations with assorted party guests, and Gabriel gives the evening\u2019s post-dinner speech and leads the toast. As Gabriel and Gretta leave the party, the snow which had been lightly falling when they arrived at the beginning of the evening has become quite heavy. The closing scene finds Gretta asleep at their hotel while Gabriel stands at the window looking at the snow blanketing the city. Gabriel feels, in fact, that the snow is falling over the entirety of Ireland. Before falling asleep, Gretta had shared a memory about Michael Furey, the Irish activist lover of her youth. The reader is left to wonder whether Gabriel feels sorrow or acceptance over his wife\u2019s confession that she still harbors feelings for her former lover. The ending, it would seem, is deliberately ambiguous. Indeed, the ending forces the reader to go back into the story looking for clues as to whether we\u2019re supposed to read the ending as \u201chappy\u201d or \u201csad.\u201d While \u201cThe Dead\u201d is quite a famous story, less well known to the general public is its place as the culminating story in Joyce\u2019s first book, a collection of short stories titled Dubliners. The collection was rejected 17 times over a 10-year period, with some of those rejections being based on what publishers and printers considered to be objectionable material. Finally published in 1914, this collection of 15 stories was Joyce\u2019s first attempt to bring his native city to life. Of course, he would go on to write again and again about the Irish capital, most famously in his 1922 novel, Ulysses, which recounts one day in the life of Leopold Bloom as he makes his way through the streets of Dublin. But Dubliners was Joyce\u2019s initial portrait of a city he both loved and hated. Each story in the collection features a different resident of Dublin, and each tells a different tale of the suffocating, dreary lives lived in this city. The characters presented here suffer from spiritual paralysis, squelched freedom, and ##. Joyce himself admitted that the stories capture some of the unhappiest moments of life. If you\u2019re looking for uplifting literature, Dubliners is not the book for you. When read against the backdrop of these stories, \u201cThe Dead\u201d \u2013 which is the finale of sorts to Dubliners \u2013 takes on an extra richness, an extra dimension. When read in this context, the story\u2019s ambiguous ending becomes both easier and harder to read. Has Gabriel had an epiphany about the ways in which the dead live on in the memories of the living? Or has he succumbed \u2013 as the other characters in the Dubliners stories do \u2013 to a kind of paralysis, a numbing inability to be fully alive? Is the snow a beautiful phenomenon that brings all of Ireland together? Or is it a symbol of coldness, of death, a killing frost? As one source says, \u201cIn every corner of the country, snow touches both the dead and the living, uniting them in frozen paralysis. However, Gabriel\u2019s thoughts in the final lines of Dubliners suggest that the living might in fact be able to free themselves and live unfettered by deadening routines and the past. Even in January, snow is unusual in Ireland and cannot last forever.\u201d To consider the ending yourself, you\u2019ll want to read this powerful story, which you can do for free at Project Gutenberg (and in fact, you can read the entire Dubliners collection here as well). If you prefer a hard copy, there\u2019s an inexpensive Dover Thrift Edition. You might also want to watch John Huston\u2019s 1987 film adaptation of \u201cThe Dead.\u201d It starred his daughter Angelica Huston as Gretta Conroy and Donal McCann as her husband, Gabriel. Want to dig deeper? A helpful glossary of terms is available, and a digitized copy of the first edition of Dubliners can be found at Internet Archive. Richard Ellman\u2019s biography of Joyce remains the standard, though its revised edition was published more than 30 years ago. Cornell\u2019s James Joyce Collection is outstanding. You might also want to visit The James Joyce Centre \u2013 either online or in person in Dublin! Visit thestoryweb.com\/joyce for links to all these resources and to watch the film\u2019s ending. But first, take a listen as I read the opening pages of \u201cThe Dead.\u201d   Lily, the caretaker\u2019s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies\u2019 dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come. It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan\u2019s annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia\u2019s choir, any of Kate\u2019s pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane\u2019s pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them in the dark gaunt house on Usher\u2019s Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils\u2019 concert every year in the upper room of the Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve\u2019s, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker\u2019s daughter, did housemaid\u2019s work for them. Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers. Of course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o\u2019clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane\u2019s pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come. \u201cO, Mr Conroy,\u201d said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, \u201cMiss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night, Mrs Conroy.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll engage they did,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cbut they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself.\u201d He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out: \u201cMiss Kate, here\u2019s Mrs Conroy.\u201d Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabriel\u2019s wife, said she must be perished alive and asked was Gabriel with her. \u201cHere I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I\u2019ll follow,\u201d called out Gabriel from the dark. He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs, laughing, to the ladies\u2019 dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds. \u201cIs it snowing again, Mr Conroy?\u201d asked Lily. She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll. \u201cYes, Lily,\u201d he answered, \u201cand I think we\u2019re in for a night of it.\u201d He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf. \u201cTell me, Lily,\u201d he said in a friendly tone, \u201cdo you still go to school?\u201d \u201cO no, sir,\u201d she answered. \u201cI\u2019m done schooling this year and more.\u201d \u201cO, then,\u201d said Gabriel gaily, \u201cI suppose we\u2019ll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?\u201d The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness: \u201cThe men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.\u201d Gabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes. He was a stout tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat. When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket. \u201cO Lily,\u201d he said, thrusting it into her hands, \u201cit\u2019s Christmas-time, isn\u2019t it? Just ... here\u2019s a little....\u201d He walked rapidly towards the door. \u201cO no, sir!\u201d cried the girl, following him. \u201cReally, sir, I wouldn\u2019t take it.\u201d \u201cChristmas-time! Christmas-time!\u201d said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation. The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him: \u201cWell, thank you, sir.\u201d He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl\u2019s bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men\u2019s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure. Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies\u2019 dressing-room. His aunts were two small plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister\u2019s, was all puckers and creases, like a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned way, had not lost its ripe nut colour. They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of the Port and Docks. \u201cGretta tells me you\u2019re not going to take a cab back to Monkstown tonight, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate. \u201cNo,\u201d said Gabriel, turning to his wife, \u201cwe had quite enough of that last year, hadn\u2019t we? Don\u2019t you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a dreadful cold.\u201d Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word. \u201cQuite right, Gabriel, quite right,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be too careful.\u201d \u201cBut as for Gretta there,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cshe\u2019d walk home in the snow if she were let.\u201d Mrs Conroy laughed. \u201cDon\u2019t mind him, Aunt Kate,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom\u2019s eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you\u2019ll never guess what he makes me wear now!\u201d She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel\u2019s solicitude was a standing joke with them. \u201cGoloshes!\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cThat\u2019s the latest. Whenever it\u2019s wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn\u2019t. The next thing he\u2019ll buy me will be a diving suit.\u201d Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia\u2019s face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew\u2019s face. After a pause she asked: \u201cAnd what are goloshes, Gabriel?\u201d \u201cGoloshes, Julia!\u201d exclaimed her sister \u201cGoodness me, don\u2019t you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your ... over your boots, Gretta, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cGuttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the continent.\u201d \u201cO, on the continent,\u201d murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly. Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered: \u201cIt\u2019s nothing very wonderful but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.\u201d \u201cBut tell me, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. \u201cOf course, you\u2019ve seen about the room. Gretta was saying....\u201d \u201cO, the room is all right,\u201d replied Gabriel. \u201cI\u2019ve taken one in the Gresham.\u201d \u201cTo be sure,\u201d said Aunt Kate, \u201cby far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta, you\u2019re not anxious about them?\u201d \u201cO, for one night,\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cBesides, Bessie will look after them.\u201d ","author_name":"StoryWeb: Storytime for Grownups","author_url":"http:\/\/storyweb.libsyn.com\/webpage","html":"