James Joyce is one of the most eloquent writers in the English language. His emotionally evocative prose and subtlety of craft have as he suggested
of his book Ulyssess, "kept them writing about it for years." Yet of all his works, it is Dubliners which receives the least attention in
critical circles. Even though it is his first prose work, it shows a maturity few writers ever achieve. The symmetry both of the pattern of narrative and
the interaction of the stories themselves, suggests an author specifically intent of the overplot of the entire work. He had the Jesuits to thank for
the syncretism of the narrative, for as he says, "they taught me to put it together in a pattern so it could be easily surveyed and judged."
Two of the themes we have studied all quarter, in relation to the Irish, are important to an understanding of his work The Dead, they are
hospitality and the permeability of boundaries. As it was his intent to show an image of Dublin life, these two characteristics of Irish culture
would inevitably be necessary, and it is in this masterpiece that they receive their greatest of acknowledgments. For to tell the story of an Irish
city with its Irish denizens, it would be impossible to leave these themes out.
Even though there are several specific instances of it throughout the work, hospitality receives it's greatest accolade in the diner speech of
Gabriel. He says of this mantle of Irishry, "...our country has no tradition which does it so much honor and which it should guard so jealousy as
that of hospitality." These words are directly corollary with John Hewlitt's poem 'The Scar'. On several occasions hospitality plays an important
role in the interaction of the characters. When Gabriel and Miss Ivors are discussing his association with an English rag, their differences are
displaced by the hospitable nature of the event, as shown by her fondly squeezing his hand. Gabriel on two occasions act as host at his aunt's
behest, by living the example he would set. When Freddy arrives somewhat drunken, Gabriel still allows him to join the party. When Miss Ivors
departs Gabriel offers to guide her home, even though they had nearly quarreled earlier. The best example though is in his carving of the goose,
where he carves out even the seconds before he himself excuses himself by asking that "no one take notice of me for a while," so he can eat.
Joyce's greatest talent lies in the evocation of these human emotions, we feel palpably for Gabriel's aunt's guests as he himself feels for their joy
and continued merriment. In the story Araby we distinctly sense the power first love has on a young boy as he goes out, belated by the
actions of an uncaring uncle, to get her a gift at the carnival. Or the gess of a mother on her daughter in Eveline, where it
eventually weighs so heavy on her, she forgoes the chance of a life away from her current miseries. Desire, unfulfilled desire, and the betrayal
of desire color these stories with a 'musty' heaviness of sorrow, which we have come to associate with the Irish.
The other major theme, which receives attention in the Dead, is the permeability of boundaries. Richard Ellman suggests in his commentary
on this story and Finnegan's Wake that there is a connection, some would see as ironic, between the party 'funferal' and a wake or funeral.
One of the most telling of these permeable boundaries is in the last episode where Gretta and Gabriel are discussing her previous love's death
for her sake. The action seems poised in suspension between the two worlds of the living and the dead. The dead come back to the living to
show their continuing affect on the living. It is in this moment that Gabriel decides to accept the journey to the west, as Ellman posits he dies
to himself as change moves him on his path. In this there is an acceptance of the process of these crossings of boundaries, out of what we where
and back to what we are. The quote from Finnegan's Wake at the top of Ellman's commentary suggests this idea with the words,
"...the West shall shake the East awake."
Another instance of this idea is in the juxtaposition of the actions of the living in the present and their reflections or memories of the past. When
Gretta holds her hand to the window and feels the cold of the outside in real time, it is balanced with Gabriel's memory of standing outside in the
cold looking inside, through a grated window, at a fire. The land of the living is full of this warmth and constantly chilled by the hand of memory,
especially the dead. In his reflection on the snow, Gabriel suggests the world is full of these memories, they crowd the living nearly out of the
landscape. This attitude is reminiscent of O'Casey's words in Juno and the Paycock, "we need to have less worship of the dead and more reverence
for the living." Perhaps this is why the cosmopolitan Gabriel finds it easy to say, as both these exiled writers would say, "...i'm sick of my country,
sick of it!" These ghosts of the dead stand outside the window, in the cold begging those of the living to let them in to share their warmth. As
the Irish see these two worlds intimately connected and as they are a hospitable people, they have no choice but to let them in.
Yet it is his subtlety that Joyce is a master of his craft. As Ellman suggests he does not force his own judgments and opinions on the reader.
Instead he requires of us a little effort, a call to dig deeper and find his underground strewn. To look at our own specific predilections, our
dogmatic moralistic judgments and cast them aside for a more sympathetic humanism; a passion for life as life, devoid of the maudlin sentimentality
of religion or politics. It's not a dress rehearsal after all, and soon we all in our time must heed the curtains fall.