When I started reading the story “The Dead” by James Joyce, I thought the main character would be Lily, because the way writer mentioned her name at the beginning of the story. As we were reading through the story we saw few more characters involved in the story. Then all the focuses went to Gabriel and his wife Gretta. There was something going on between them, because writer didn’t mention them together in the same spot that much, even when everyone was leaving, she was upstairs listening to some song, while Gabriel was downstairs trying to find out is anything wrong with her. Then end of the story writer told us why she was acting like that. That tells us what kind of ‘Character’ Gretta is.
2 thoughts on “The Dead”
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“The Dead” by James Joyce was a unique story because it had multiple charters. At the begging, I also thought that Lily was going to be one of the main charters. However, her charter only is exposed in the first pages 55-57. I was expecting the author to address why Lily had a bad image towards men. Aunt Kate stated, “There’s that Lily, I’m sure I don’t know what has come over her lately” (p.58). In other word, Aunt Kate implies that there has being a change in Lilly attitude. The description that Joyce, gives about Lily so far is not a good one. I was expecting to find out why there was a change in Lily. The author never addresses the issue of Lily attitude change leaving it to the reader’s interpretation.
I would have to agree on the first point you made, I also believed that the story was going to center around the what kind of person Lily would be. Even most of my questions were directed to how Lily as an individual would change, what kind of events would she be involved in, only to come to know she was a minor character. The ending of the story was really different we were able to see a new side of Gabriel character. “Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself toward any woman, but he knew that such a feeling much be love”. Gabriel in the early parts of the story was depicted to be an individual who seemed to be a little self-centered but towards the end he’s depicted to be more of a kind and caring person.