James Joyce Dead V Dead

Dead V Dead

Born February 2, 1882, James Joyce became one of the must influential writers during the early 20th century. Even from an early age, James showed that he was very intelligent. He possessed a gift in writing and expressed a passion for literature. James’ parents pushed for him to get a proper education because of his intelligence. Eventually Joyce graduated from the University of Dublin with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Joyce began writing short stories, right around the same time he met Nora Barnacle. Barnacle was a hotel chambermaid who eventually became his wife. Joyce’s writing began to take off, authoring a number of successful books, including Dubliners. Dubliners, originally published in 1914, was a book consisting of a collection
of fifteen short stories. The final short story in the collection is titled “The Dead.” After taking a more in depth look into James’s Joyce’s life, the similarities between Joyce’s life and the plot of “The Dead” is astounding. “The Dead” takes place in Dublin on the night of the Misses Morkan’s annual dance.
Snow covered the trees and streets outside. The story begins with guests arriving for the annual dance. Characters Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia are anticipating the arrival of their nephew and eventually we are introduced to Gabriel Conroy. Gabriel is an intelligent man who makes his living as a professor, as well as a book reviewer. While most people at the party are indulged in conversation and the hors d’oeuvres being offered, Gabriel is focused on the speech he is scheduled to deliver later that evening at dinner. This character shares a lot in common with James Joyce himself. Author Richard Ellmann penned a biography on Joyce and devoted Chapter 15 of the book to James Joyce’s story “The Dead.” Ellmann offers us some insight on the resemblance between Joyce’s real life memories and the plot shown throughout “The
Dead.” Throughout his biography on Joyce, Richard Ellmann enlightens us on many things the average person would not know about James Joyce. Ellmann’s biography states in Chapter 15 that each year James Joyce’s family would get together for a Christmas party at Usher’s Island. The location of the party being at a family members house, where Joyce’s great aunts lived. According to Stanislaus Joyce, James’ brother, the family had an dinner time tradition. This annual ritual was the carving of the goose. When it was time to carve the goose, they would address the dinner guests. In the story, the party is held at Gabriel’s aunt’s house, Gabriel is in charge of carving the goose for dinner, and he also addresses the guests. All of which James Joyce use to do at his family Christmas parties. James Joyce had a love-hate relationship with his homeland. Though many of Joyce’s literary works set place in his homeland of Dublin, Ireland, James scorned the provincial limitations that Dublin possessed, along with the lack of enthusiasm that displayed for the native culture as a young man. In “The Dead,” Gabriel clearly states in a conversation with Miss Ivors that he is sick of his own homeland. Because of this, Miss Ivors refers to Gabriel as a, “West Briton,” (Pg. 70) It is clear that Gabriel is agitated with his homeland, just as Joyce was as a young boy. Another resemblance between the story and James Joyce’s personal is brought to our attention on page 68. On page 68, Gabriel is engaged in a conversation with Miss Ivors. In the duration of their conversation, Miss Ivor states, “I have found out that you write for The Daily Express” (Pg 68). The story states that Gabriel does in fact write a literary column for The Daily Express every Wednesday for fifteen shillings. Come to find out, James Joyce actually wrote columns for The Daily Express between the years 1902 to 1903. This can be confirmed through the James Joyce Centre. The biggest resemblance between the story, “The Dead,” and James Joyce’s personal life is the character Gretta Conroy and Joyce’s wife Nora Barnacle. In “The Dead,” After hearing the song “The Lass of Aughrim” at dinner, something was noticeably different in Gretta’s behavior. She seemed upset about something. On page 87 of the story, Gabriel confronts Gretta about her change in behavior. Gretta goes on to tell Gabriel about a previous incident of her past. She explains to Gabriel that a man by the name of Michael Furey use to sing it. Gabriel does not understand the significance of Michael Furey at first. Gretta goes on to tell Gabriel that she was “..great with him at the time,” (Pg. 87). When it came time for her to leave Dublin to go to the convent, Michael Furey was quite sick. He left his sickbed in the cold rain to go see Gretta one last time. After only being at the convent a week, Gretta received news that Michael Furey had died. It was obvious that he still meant something to Gretta after all that time. Backtrack a little into Nora Barnacle’s life a little bit and a similar story pops up. When Nora was a young girl in Galway, she had been attracted to a man named Michael Bodkin, who had a case of tuberculosis. One night when Nora was getting ready to leave for Dublin, Bodkin left his sickbed in the cold rainy weather to sing Nora a song and to say goodbye. The two stories are nearly identical. Therefore, as we can see, “The Dead” by James Joyce shows us an insight on how James Joyce was as a writer.
The resemblance between the story and past events of his life shows us that Joyce is a passionate writer. The events displayed to us in “The Dead,” are very similar to those encountered by James Joyce throughout his life. It is quite evident that character Gretta Conroy in “The Dead” is to be based on his real life love Nora Barnacles and that the character Gabriel Conroy, Gretta’s husband, is meant to be Joyce himself. The annual dance held in the story matches up with the family Christmas parties Joyce attended as a child, all the way up to the carving of the goose and addressing the attendees. As the audience of this story, we can conclude that these events in Joyce’s life had a big impact on his life. In 1987, a movie based on Joyce’s story “The Dead,” was released. Director John Huston, who was dying at the time, directed the film to nine awards, two Oscar nominations, and another fourteen nominations at different events. The fact that director John Huston spent the last of his life directing a movie based on James Joyce’s story, shows just how much people appreciate his work still to this
day.