James Joyce Reading Group discussion
Dubliners
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The Dead (Dubliners)
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Gotta read this one again. I only read it once just to say I read it, but now I've got to really explore it. And the others, too. (Phillip, I like how you are beginning to devote a thread to each of the tales. You can maybe organize all of the tales into sub-threads under the Dubliners thread. Maybe that will open up more participation.)
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who knows what would open up more participation. it might help if people read his work.
Recently reread. The snow-- "Winter of our discontent"? Or, a more positive note, spiritual cleansing, or the beginning of a cleansing (by the time spring arrives). I'm not entirely sure if it is a positive or negative ending. Maybe Joyce didn't know for certain either. Gosh, I want to see that movie now.
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The snow in this story is so all pervasive. Gabriel shakes the snow off his shoulder (I think) when he enters his aunts' house. He wears golashes to keep the snow off of his shoes (Gretta doesn't like golashes). He seems to want to rid himself of the snow at the beginning. At the end of the story, he gazes out the window and notices the snow gently falling. Then he imagines how the snow is falling all over Dublin, over Ireland, over the universe.I think he beings to realize at this point that he is trapped; he gets the epiphany while the others do not. I think he feels let down as the past creeps up on him, even though in his speech he advises everyone not to live in the past. Sad, really sad. This is what would have happened to Joyce if he had not left Ireland.
Finished Dubliners yesterday! OH MY GOD was 'The Dead' good.
And I do have to say that honestly, knowing Joyce's mind state, I don't see the 'hopeful' ending that people seem to speak of. :(
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for me, the fact that gabriel and gretta have actually shattered this wall of silence that clearly has separated them all these years is hopeful. although the sting of knowledge comes from knowing she had a great love early in life, this news has actually increased their intimacy. while it may hurt in the moment, i feel they will become closer as a result.
Phillip, you may be right. I am not sure. The Dead leaves me in limbo much as I think it did Gabriel. I do think there must be something in the order of the stories and the fact that Joyce ends it with the Dead. We know he did not do anything in an arbitrary fashion and that he worked on Dublners for some time. I am not sure what any of my rambling says about the issue of hopefulness in The Dead.
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this guy back in dublin gossiped and it got to joyce that he had had relations with norah barnacle (joyce's life long love). it wasn't true, but joyce believed it at first and wrote some really harsh letters to norah, who was back in trieste (i believe) where they were living. norah had just had their first child and this guy gossiped that the baby could have been his. i'm forgetting this guy's name.
anyway, infidelity plays a big role in joyce's fiction. it's in the dead, ulysses and finnegans' wake. i can't remember how it plays in portrait. i need to re-read that this summer. it's been a while since i've paid attention to it.
Phillip wrote: "sorry, i didn't make something clear.....this guy back in dublin gossiped and it got to joyce that he had had relations with norah barnacle (joyce's life long love). it wasn't true, but joyce b..."
Oh wow! That is such great knowledge. I need to read Joyce's biography.
I find it to be rather negative, actually. Throughout the entire story, Gabriel is beneath the shadow of the dead, the past. There are the old singers of years past, which were professed to be far better than the current ones. There are the hostesses, who are themselves past their prime and surely not too far from the grave (as admitted). There is also, of course, the dilema of Ireland, as it currently is (but has not always been) beneath the rule of England. The state of decay and has-been is quite heavy here, as in much of Joyce's other work.Then Gabriel finds that (or, being caught up in the emotion of a stressful and late evening, becomes convinced that) his own wife views him under the shadow of one who had loved her and passed on long ago. I believe that the ending is one of frustration: accepted, natural and necessary. This does not in the slightest tarnish the beauty of the story's closing sentances.
You know I think I see more of a resigned ending now, when I think of the end of Ulysses compared to this...there's some bad, but the good things are there to be cherished. The end of both tales are ambiguous...just like life until we finally do die.
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as Anthony burgess notes in his book on Joyce, his real revelations are expressed in "good, round, Dublin terms.
Hey all!I have read The Dead twice. I like it so much. I like the opening of Dubliners. But hey, don`t you all want to talk about Araby? That is the most romantic story on Dubliners. Anyone want to share? ;D
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is it the most romantic? there certainly is a good deal of desire and imagination in the lad's mind, but nothing comes of it. is that the fate of all romance? was joyce saying that romance is all folly and vanity? or is it merely desire that is an outgrowth of vanity?
my favorite words on love from joyce are in the cyclops episode of ULYSSES ... "love loves to love love ..."
Araby is one of my favorite stories. I found Araby beautiful and realistic, and having been to a bazaar at closing I easily found myself there. I do not think it is the fate of all romance, but perhaps a chapter in all adolescent romances. Who hasn't been there in the throes of adolescent love, creatures derided by vanity, with eyes burned with anguish and anger?
Phillip wrote: "go ahead and post some thoughts on ARABY, i'll chime in. i'll start with some questions ...is it the most romantic? there certainly is a good deal of desire and imagination in the lad's mind, but..."
We`d better start this discussion about ARABY on a new discussion board. But, I can`t start it because I`m not the moderator of this group. (Or, okay, we can discuss here :))
To me, Araby is the most romantic. I think that`s just a simple story of two children. But, I like the way Joyce describe or explain the details. That makes the story alive or has a real soul.
You all have to watch this video. I have watched it several times, but unfortunately I can`t find the movie in my country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pUH1...
Wow, I like it. Love loves to love love. I haven`t heard about it before because I haven`t finished reading Ulysses yet.
I think that "The Dead" is a story of recognition before it's a positive or negative story. That's kind of basic, especially considering that each story in this collection is an epiphany. But if we look at Joyce's oeuvre, he was obsessed with writing stories and characters who all capture something in a "moment." Enter "The Dead." What Gabriel discovers is the substance of 'Dubliners' at the end of his story. If we were to take the snow as a metaphor for the dead and living, as well as the half-lived lives that pervade this volume of stories, then we could read the ending of "The Dead" as a recognition that death and life are intertwined. One does not exist without the other. However, this seems as cryptic and neutral a reading as the volume taken as a whole. That's dissatisfying to me. But the comments alluding to a "rebirth" may point to where Joyce was going.
In short: If Gabriel recognizes that death and life are intertwined, then he now understands that life involves an opening up of perspective and the self to worldly experiences, as opposed to his stiff, emotionless interactions with people throughout the story. "The Dead" could be a story about "dying into life," and the "positive" moral could be that life well-lived demands emotional honesty to one's self, and above all, vulnerability to others.
In short: If Gabriel recognizes that death and life are intertwined, then he now understands that life involves an opening up of perspective and the self to worldly experiences, as opposed to his stiff, emotionless interactions with people throughout the story. "The Dead" could be a story about "dying into life," and the "positive" moral could be that life well-lived demands emotional honesty to one's self, and above all, vulnerability to others.
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Is the end a "positive" ending or "negative" ending? What does the snow symbolize?
The end is so lyrical and beautiful that I can never concede to a "negative" ending, that is, an expression of hopelessness and loss.
"It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses
and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
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I never tried to read it as positive or negative. Death just is. It's a part of life, a chapter which none of us have read to the end. By the time we read it, we are no longer around to comment on it.
The beauty arrives, I think, as a result of the statement in retrograde of the opening (from The Sisters, where death has a very different meaning), so I guess you could see it as a "positive" ending. In the opening story (as we have discussed elsewhere) death arrives as a symbol of a dying society/culture (Dublin). In the end, it seems to me, death reflects the end of secrecy but it also suggests the "end" of illusion. Gabriel knows his wife more closely than he did before she confesses her love for her childhood friend.
It seems possible that Joyce, despite his desire to wash Christianity out of his hair, goes back to the idea that the ressurection is possible (in this ending). For although Gabriel and Gretta have just uncovered an old secret that makes him realize they are not as close as he imagined (something that could be construed as the death of their intimacy), it is, rather, an act of intimacy to reveal a secret like this - so there is a double-edged ending here. I do not read this as a negative, although I think on the surface people see this ending as anti-climactic (in the literal sense...Gabriel was feeling amorous toward Gretta and probably wanted to bed down and make love to her). Instead she tells him of someone that she held in her heart years ago.
If we are going to live and evolve and become closer in relationships, we have to be able to accept this kind of disclosure from our lovers. While the train is momentarily de-railed, I still believe Gabriel and Gretta have created a deeper intimacy with this "moment", and the snow falling in the end reflects the duality of this event which has passed between them.
That's always been my reading of this...but I don't pretend to be right when it comes to interpretation. Interpreting literature is as personal as interpreting dreams...we rely on our own unique system of symbols to interpret the world around us. The systems of others may help to illuminate, but only to the extent that we can learn about our own perspectives.