...Example Literary Research Paper Michelle Carerra Professor Krickstein English 1302 October 15, 2004 The Awakening of Gabriel Conroy Like the stories in Dubliners that lead up to it, “The Dead” dramatizes a moment of self-realization. The story portrays the gradual awakening of Gabriel Conroy, whose vision of his wife, Gretta, at the end of the story is at once a frustrating disappointment and a touching movement toward understanding and love. Robert Adams voices the view of more than one critic when he writes of “The Dead” that this “greatest of the stories in Dubliners stands apart from the rest, being warmer in tonality, richer in the writing, and more intimate in its subject matter” (83). Florence Walzl agrees when she writes that “’The Dead’ is markedly different from the earlier stories. . . .It is not only a longer, more fully developed narrative, but it presents a more kindly view of Ireland” (428). In one sense the “dead” of the title are all those who have lived and died, those who have gone before the festive inhabitants of Dublin who celebrate the Christmas season, Gabriel Conroy and Gretta among them. In another sense the dead are all those who, though alive and breathing, have lost their naturalness, their spontaneity, and most importantly, their passion. Gabriel, one of these, has lost touch with his past and with traditional Irish values. He looks instead toward continental Europe, toward the future, and toward change for an escape...
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...Not Living Dead If there is one thing that has remained true throughout the time of all human existence, it is that we all must die. However, there are sometimes moments in our lives when we encounter people who are perfectly alive, but could also be characteristically described as dead. In James Joyce’s “The Dead”, we encounter Gabriel who has an epiphany that is considered gloomy on a night that has historically always been “a great affair” (178). In reading about Gabriel’s epiphany, it has served as a sort of warning to me personally, that it is important to take the time out to really enjoy the ununiformed parts of life. The lesson is a warning against working so hard that I wake up one day to find myself dead inside, thus becoming a part of the living dead. Gabriel is a man who considers himself intelligent, in fact, more intelligent than the other guests at the party, and this is further evidenced, as he studied his speech and considered changing parts of it to accommodate those who may not understand his Robert Browning references. “He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers” (180). The setting of the story begins at an annual party that his aunts and cousin host, and then veers off to a lonely night in a hotel room. The contrast of the settings is interesting because at the party, Gabriel appears to be this intelligent, comedic guy who his aunts deem important as they felt that he was the perfect...
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...Dubliners Joyce, James Published: 1914 1 About Joyce: James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (Irish Séamus Seoighe; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish expatriate writer, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novels Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939), the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Although his adult life was largely spent outside the country, Joyce's fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and provide the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. In particular, his tempestuous early relationship with the Irish Roman Catholic Church is reflected through a similar inner conflict in his recurrent alter ego Stephen Dedalus. As the result of his minute attentiveness to a personal locale and his self-imposed exile and influence throughout Europe, Joyce became simultaneously one of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great English language writers. Source: Wikipedia 2 Chapter 1 The Sisters There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles...
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