Why James Joyce used the festive setting of a party for his short story The Dead
Why does Joyce use the festive setting of a party for his short story The Dead? In this essay, I will discuss the reasons, as I see them, why Joyce set his short story The Dead at a party. This short story is taken from a collection of stories by Joyce, called Dubliners. In these stories, Joyce deals with different aspects of Dublin life including childhood, adolescence, mature life and public life. ... Joyce feels that Dublin is the “centre of paralysis” and that Dubliners are trapped by mundane, ordinary and historic traditions. In this short story, Joyce re-echoes the themes that have been prevalent during the preceding chapters of Dubliners. In The Dead, we are told of a tragic love story between Gretta Conroy and Michael Furey resulting in the death of the aforementioned young man. This story actually recalls a memory from Joyce’s wife’s past and we see clearly the theme common throughout many 20th century novelists: an awareness of mortality. The story is basically one of the self-realisation of the protagonist, Gabriel Conroy. The narrative stage is set in three main parts; 1) a build up of expectancy in the opening pages of the book and continuing subtly throughout the rest of the story; 2) eventuality of the story of the dead lover and 3) Gabriel’s epiphany, overcoming the paralysis and realising that he is not in charge of his own destiny. What I now propose to discuss is the reason that Joyce set this story with its themes and issues in the festive atmosphere of a party. If the setting were simply Gabriel alone in a room during the revelations about his wife’s past, we certainly would not have gotten the same reaction from him or his wife. Indeed, we could also assume that Gretta would never have been reminded of her loss if it had not have been for the music at the party.