After reading the dead, I had a couple of key points that stuck with me. One was the fact that this story incorporated just about every theme from previous stories. It covers the idea of Ireland’s “life span” and how it is turning out in that point and time. It also shows how people are adjusting to Ireland’s downfall. Many just blame other things, or do nothing to improve their situation. At first I thought Gabriel’s speach at the dinner table was finally a character realizing that their lives are valuable and worth working at to better the situation. After seeing his reaction to finding out about his wife’s former “pursuers”, Michael Furey, death and doing some research that it was at that time when Gabriel realizes that there is more then just living and dying. In his speech I think he made it seem like the past will not follow and they can just move on, but he realizes that it does follow you and in order to make a better life you have to change things. I think this was a good way of ending a book about never improving yourself. Finally someone had realized what must be done.
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This past week we had to read the last three stories in the book. The stories were "Grace", "A Mother" and "The Dead". I found these last few stories to be longer and sometimes the associations in them to be less obvious then before. The story "Grace" was about a man who is a victim of alcoholism. His friends convince him to go to a church. When they go to the church it seems as if the priest does not act as a typical priest would. In the end his faith is not renewed. I thought overall this story was ok but I thought it was interesting how the story had more scene changes then most of the stories before it. The story reveals how many people in Ireland are given the opportunity to move forward but continue to stay in their repeating pattern. The next story was "A Mother". This is about a girl who plays in a ok band. Her mom demands payment before the last show and also complains about the fact that the shows are not well attended. The concerned mother does not let her daughter play the second half of the show and ruins her job. This story brings back Joyce's theme of Paralysis. The concert could not go on without her daughter. The next and last story in the book was "The Dead". I thought this story was a bit different from the other ones. This story was much longer and seemed to have more of a story line then most of the other stories. The story is about a Man named Gaberial who attends a party every year. He notices his wife is listening to a song very intently. He later finds out it was because it is a connection to a past close friends. He immediately gets jealous. At the end of the story he figures out that he wants to live life and be happy. I thought it was interesting how Joyce infers that Ireland is similar to the party being thrown every year. How it is the same thing and things never change but go in a circle. In addition, I thought that this story had a relative happy ending compared to any of the other stories. I felt like Gaberial was going to finally change. Overall, I have enjoyed reading the dubliners even though it was very difficult.
ReplyDeleteTyler10,
I thought you had a lot of great points. I really agree with you when you said that the people in Ireland at the time are blaming all their failures on the things around them instead of looking at them, the real problem. I believe to a certain degree that still exists today. Most people realize they have a problem but say that it was always someone else's fault.
Jennifer Phillips