Brian Richardson
richb@umd.edu
Teaching Joyce’s “The Dead” from the Perspective of Narrative Theory
1) Plot. What exactly would a summary of the plot of “The Dead” consist of? What does
such a summary leave out? In what sense is this a “plotless” work? Do the avents
unconnected by the plot nevertheless cohere together in other ways?
1a) Beginnings. We know where the text (syuzhet) starts—with the first sentence of the
work. Where exactly does the plot start? Where does the story (fabula) start?
1b) Closure. What is the significance of the end of the tale? How does it (or how does it
fail to) wrap up the various strands of the story? What are the implications of an open
ending? Can one legitimately draw references to the Conroys in a later work of fiction by
Joyce (Ulysses ) to help resolve the question of the ending of this text?
2) Character. What exactly is Gabriel’s character? How do we treat the dissolution of his
sense of self at the end of the text? “His own identity was fading out into a grey
implacable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in
was dissolving and dwindling” (59). Which other characters have a shifting or elusive
identity? (See Benstock, 161-66.) What does it mean for characters in this story to act as
avatars of characters of earlier stories (Gabriel and Michael as archangels; Michael Furey
as one of the Eumenides, etc). What is the relation of characters to their bodies? What is
the status and function of the female characters?
3) Time. This narrative may be entirely linear. Fritz Senn observes that “technically,
Dubliners offers a survey of narrative time management. How the fifteen stories handle
antecedence alone is a topic for research” (20). How does the past intrude on the present,
and how does Joyce work past events into the narrative present? How many different
layers of the past are present in a significant way?
4) Space. What are the spatial dynamics of the tale? What is the relation between inside
and outside, spaces depicted and those referred to? What direction does the cab travel on
its way to the hotel? What are all the meanings of “west”?
5) Cause. The causal laws governing Dubliners are assumed to be naturalistic ones. What
does it mean to take supernatural stories (Odysseus, the Eumenedies) and recast them in
an entirely naturalistic manner? At the end of “The Dead,” there are vague suggestions of
supernatural forces. How are we to take these? (Does Gabriel literally hear the snow
“tapping” on the window or is this a psychological or preternatural reappearance of the
stones Michael Furey had tossed against Gretta’s window years before?)
6) Narration. This story is narrated in the third person, with a single primary focalizer.
Who is responsible for the first sentence, which contains a serious mistake in usage that
no omniscient narrator would normally produce: “Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was
literally run off her feet”? Whose perspective is next presented in the text? Who speaks
the final lines that seem to invest Gabriel’s perspective with omniscience: “Yes, the
newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of
the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly on the Bog of Allen and, farther
westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too, upon
every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried” (59).
How can we describe the sensibility of the third-person narrator? Is he male? He is
perfectly objective? Margot Norris suggests, “the voice that narrates ‘The Dead’ promotes
the interests and values of the story’s male protagonist, and therefore must not be trusted
to be ‘innocent,’ disinterested, or fair. The narrative voice has a bourgeois agenda” (193).
Does the text undermine this narrator?
6a) Focalization. For the most part, the telling of this story is focalized entirely through
Gabriel’s consciousness. Observe where this starts—and why it starts where it does. Who
is the focalizer of the final passages?
7) Language as Plot: How do casual metaphors and images become invested with larger
meaning and prefigure major developments of the plot? (E. g.: “perished alive” 23; “she’d
walk home in the snow if she were let” 25; “kindly forget my existence” 39.
8) Intertextuality. Which earlier narratives are alluded to, explicitly or implicitly? What is
their function in this text? Can we hierarchize the importance of the various earlier texts?
How do they affect or direct the plot? How do they affect the reader’s response?
9) Reader Response: Who is the authorial audience for this text? Is there more than one?
How different is the narrative audience from the authorial audience? What is the implicit
gender of each?
Bibliography:
Edition: The Dead, ed. Daniel Schwarz. St. Martin’s, “Case Studies in Contemporary
Criticism” series. Theoretical essays by Peter Rabinowitz (reader response), Margot
Norris (feminism), John Paul Riquelme (deconstruction), and Schwarz (psychological).
Benstock, Bernard. Narrative Con/Texts of Dubliners. U Illinois P, 1994.
Richardson, Brian, “Teaching Story, Plot, and Progression” in Teaching Narrative
Theory, eds. David Herman, Brian McHale, and James Phelan. MLA, 2008.
Senn, Fritz, “Dubliners: Renewed Time after Time,” New Perspectives on Dubliners.
European Jouyce Studies 7 1997. Eds. Mary Power and Ulrich Schneider, Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 19-44.
See Also:
Narrative Dynamics: Essays on Time, Plot, Closure, and Frames,
edited by Brian Richardson. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2002.