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Love, Jealousy, and Possession
Through Gabriel, Joyce argues that, for many, love is synonymous with possession. At the end of the party, Gabriel spies Gretta standing on the stairs, transfixed by D’Arcy’s song. Gabriel remarks to himself that he wishes he was a painter so that he could paint the scene before him and imagines how he would turn Gretta’s curious mood into a symbol for something that he can not pinpoint at that very moment. Gabriel’s brief moment of voyeurism is deceptively harmless. While his desire to paint his wife may sound like a sweet sentiment in theory, Gabriel essentially wishes to turn Gretta into a two-dimensional version of herself that he has total control over because he does not understand her strange response to the old Irish song. The blending of romance and possession returns towards the end of the text when Gabriel reflects on his and Gretta’s romantic past. Though Gabriel remembers their romantic courtship and is overcome with attraction for Gretta, this attraction is rooted not in love but in his desire to control her. For instance, he is drawn to Gretta’s frailty, presumably because he sees her as a fragile possession under his protection. At the hotel, when Gretta confesses to Gabriel that the song made her think of her first love, he becomes furious at her and himself. He is consumed with jealousy upon realizing that he has no claim on her and will never be “master.” For Gabriel, to love is to control and any threat to said control undermines the husband/wife dynamic.
Mortality
As the short story’s title suggests, “The Dead” is largely a contemplation on life, death, and mortality. Over the course of the short story, Gabriel experiences an inward change that makes him examine his own life and human life in general. While many characters in Dubliners suddenly stop pursuing what they desire without explanation, this story offers a more specific articulation for Gabriel’s actions. Gabriel sees himself as a shadow of a person, flickering in a world in which the living and the dead meet. Though in his speech at the dinner he insisted on the division between the past of the dead and the present of the living, Gabriel now recognizes, after hearing that Michael Furey’s memory lives on, that such division is false. As he looks out of his hotel window, he sees the falling snow, and he imagines it covering Michael Furey’s grave just as it covers those people still living, as well as the entire country of Ireland. This causes Gabriel to contemplate his own mortality and the mortality of his loved ones. He is arrested by the realization that his Aunt Julia is not long for this world and will probably die very soon and he imagines grieving along with his family at her funeral. The story leaves open the possibility that Gabriel might change his attitude and embrace life, even though his somber dwelling on the darkness of Ireland thematically closes Dubliners with morose acceptance.
The Pull of Foreign Shores
Gabriel is far more interested in continental Europe and the United Kingdom than he is in Ireland. He wears galoshes, in part, because they are a fashion trend that is favored on the continent. He also publishes reviews of British poets, insists to Molly Ivors that Gaelic is not his language, and wants to travel to France or Germany or Belgium over the summer instead of accompanying his friends and colleagues to the Aran Isles. All of these examples show that Gabriel sees other countries as a preferable alternative to his home country.
The most revealing display of Gabriel’s sentiments occurs during his argument with Molly Ivors when he says that he is “sick of [his] own country” but is unable to articulate why when she presses him to do so. Many protagonists in Dubliners are unhappy and desire an escape from the monotony of Dublin life, and Gabriel Conroy is no exception. However, he differs from some of the other Dubliners protagonists because he does not seem to fully realize that he feels that way. At no point in the text does Gabriel express a wish to live abroad and move away from the life that he has always known. However, his behavior throughout “The Dead” reveals that the appeal of immigration lies just below the surface.
