The Dead, By James Joyce (1914)

 The Dead, By James Joyce (1914)

9/10


Throughout about 80 percent of the story, I felt that this story was basically like just another story in Dubliners. The only difference was that instead of focusing on few characters throughout the whole story, the character this story focused on changed every few passages. I supposed it was nothing more than just an experiment where the author tried to show many characters and teach various lessons by making a dull main character face mildly individual characters one after another.

When I reached the part about Michael Furey however, I realized I was so wrong. It felt like a giant puzzle was all coming together. Every small part of the story, the details about how old the sisters are, the short talk about their dead relatives, the conversation about the monks sleeping in coffins, the speech about change of tradition, all this led to one great conclusion, that the dead will forever live among the living as influence and memories.

The great puzzle became even bigger when I realized how similar yet differently ‘The sisters’ and ‘The dead’ approaches death. I was utterly shocked how much perfectly Joyce planned this story. I rated this story nine out of ten.

(199 words)

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