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Johnny the Horse
As the Morkans’ party is drawing to a close, Gabriel entertains the remaining guests with a story about Johnny, his grandfather’s horse. Pat Morkan, Gabriel’s grandfather, had a starch mill in Back Lane and he had a horse named Johnny who would walk around in circles in order to drive the mill. Gabriel explains that one day, his grandfather decided to get all dressed up and take Johnny to the park to see a military review. Unfortunately, Johnny was so used to working in the mill that he kept walking in circles around a fountain instead of taking Pat where he wanted to go.
Gabriel’s story is an amusing anecdote but it is significant to the text and Dubliners as a whole. “The Dead,” like many short stories in Dubliners, is in part about the mind-numbing power of routine and monotony. Many characters, including Gabriel, feel trapped in an endless cycle that is void of meaning and originality. Johnny the horse, then, becomes a symbol for the people of Dublin who are all mindlessly repeating the same tasks over and over again with no opportunity to improve their stagnant state. Through his use of symbolism, Joyce argues that the citizens of Dublin, like horses that power a mill, are all simply cogs in a machine.
Snow
It is snowing the night of the Morkans’ party. This comes up several times throughout the story. The characters discuss the proper footwear for snowy weather, lament the snow’s ability to make people sick, fight through the snow to get into cabs at the end of the night, and worry about what the cold air can do to the elderly. Finally, Gabriel gazes out of his hotel window and watches the snow and imagines it blanketing Micheal Furey’s grave and Ireland as a whole.
Snow, and winter in general, is often used in literature to symbolize death and mortality and Joyce’s “The Dead” is no exception. “The Dead” is largely a contemplation of life and death. Over the course of the story, Gabriel slowly comes to terms with his own mortal state and realizes that death is the only true equalizer because it eventually comes for everyone. The snow that falls over Dublin symbolizes the indiscriminate nature of death because it simply covers everyone and everything. In the short story’s final line, Gabriel notes that snow falls “upon the living and the dead.” This final line, which is also the final line of Dubliners as a collection, is an acknowledgement that everyone will eventually meet the same fate.
