The Dead: Section 3 Summary & Analysis

The continual mention of the cold once again draws attention to death, which awaits all of the party guests just as the cold awaits them outside. Aunt Kate’s joke about Mr. Browne reiterates Gabriel’s feelings that Dublin is dull, simple, and commonplace—and yet he continues to live there and seems to have no intention of ever leaving (except for an occasional vacation). All of these examples serve to illustrate the fact that Gabriel’s life is generally empty and passionless. Much like his grandfather’s horse, Gabriel feels he is going in circles, stuck in Dublin, getting nowhere—even if he isn’t yet ready to admit this to himself.

This passage begins the closing scene of the story, as the party ends and Gabriel is left alone with Gretta. His inability to recognize his own wife as she stands in the shadows looking wistful sets in motion the idea of a fundamental disconnection between Gabriel and Gretta, even if in this moment the disconnection seems romantic. Gabriel is enthralled by seeing Gretta in this “new light,” but only because it makes her seem no longer familiar to him, but rather foreign and “other.” Yet he doesn’t consider just why she might be so distracted by hearing this song—that she might have her own nostalgic associations with it, entirely independent of Gabriel or their relationship.

Gabriel’s romanticized memories of the beginning of his relationship with Gretta distract him from their disconnection in the present. Gabriel’s memory of them watching the man making bottles in the furnace represents their glimpse of passion in the early stages of their relationship. However, the fact that they are still outside in the cold even in the memory represents that they never had true passion like Michael Furey felt for Gretta. Gabriel waxes poetic as he enjoys a rush of tenderness for his wife, seemingly inspired by seeing her briefly as her own woman, someone wholly unfamiliar to him.

Gabriel’s sudden feelings of lust for Gretta are inextricably connected to his desire to fulfill a masculine role and control her. He is thinking of her with great affection, but there is a possessiveness inherent to that affection—he wants her to be thinking of him too, and thus to be “master of her mood.” Gabriel continues to feel a sense of nostalgia and excitement, as if something about this night offers an escape from the dullness of his usual life. In wanting to keep the lighting dim, Gabriel is perhaps trying to prolong the feeling he had watching Gretta on the staircase—observing their relationship in a romantic dimness that obscures harsh realities and banal familiarities. Yet this dimness also obscures the truth of the disconnection between Gabriel and Gretta, as she is “preoccupied” with something wholly separate from Gabriel.

Gabriel’s confidence is directly affected by how much affection Gretta displays. In this climactic turn, Gretta finally expresses her own inner life, and her thoughts are entirely different from what Gabriel expected them to be. It’s telling, then, that his response to this is anger and jealousy—his affection and desire for Gretta depended on her affirmation and reciprocation, and when he discovers that she is thinking of someone else altogether, these tender feelings evaporate. Gretta, meanwhile, has similarly allowed herself to be distracted from the present by her nostalgic feelings for her past lover.

Gabriel is continuing to react purely based on his wounded pride and jealousy. Even though Michael Furey is dead, Gabriel still sees him as a threat and an obstacle to his desire to be the “master” of his wife’s “mood.” These feelings prevent him from empathizing with Gretta, as Gabriel continues to see his wife only in the context of her relationship to him.

Gretta views her relationship with Michael Furey through a nostalgic lens and turns him into a romantic martyr, regardless of whether or not his late-night visit actually caused his death. Gabriel’s epiphany—the story’s climax—begins with this transformation of his feelings, as his angry jealousy turns to terror and then a kind of self-effacing sadness. As his jealousy disappears, Gabriel is finally moved to see Gretta as her own person, with her own inner life and past passions that have nothing to do with him. This unique kind of sadness—Gabriel’s realization that he could be thinking nostalgically of their past relationship while Gretta was thinking nostalgically of her past relationship with another—speaks to a fundamental disconnection between all people, no matter how close or familiar they seem, and is a crucial aspect of the complex epiphany that closes the story.

It’s important to note that once Gabriel’s thoughts grow more expansive and selfless—as he sheds his jealousy and pride and considers Gretta as her own mysterious, independent, unknowable person—his thoughts almost immediately turn to death. Joyce shows this very subtly, as Gabriel is also thinking about the party and his aunts in connection to the night’s revelations about Gretta, but this next becomes a realization that Aunt Julia will probably die soon, which then brings Gabriel to terms with his own mortality. Gabriel believes now that Michael Furey (and perhaps Gretta as well) experienced a love worth dying for, which is something Gabriel has never had. In this moment Gabriel feels that his long, comfortable life has been devoid of true passion or human connection, and thus is meaningless compared to a short life with an experience of such passion and connection.

The narration expands with Gabriel’s thoughts, leaving his narrow perception (which the third-person narrator generally follows, as part of Joyce’s method of free indirect discourse) and widening to the snowy expanses outside, and even to all of Ireland, as Gabriel’s epiphany brings him a moment of selflessness and truth. Gabriel realizes that the living and the dead are always intimately bound to each other, and that his own passionless life can barely be defined as “living”—yet in this moment he observes this fact only with a kind of dispassionate sadness. In his epiphany he feels that he suddenly understands the dead and their ceaseless presence among the living, and this brings on his visions of their “grey impalpable world.” In the story’s famous and lovely ending, then, the indiscriminately falling snow symbolically unifies the living and the dead in one final image.