The Dead

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.

week 4

The last three stories we read were "A Mother", "Grace", and "The Dead". By the time I got to these stories I understood them more than the other ones. "A Mother" was about a mother who ruined her daughters career. Her daughter was playing in a concert but had not gotten paid. Because of this the daughters mother complains to the to men running the show which causes her daughter to get fired from the show. Therefor, ruining the daughters career for the rest of her life. In "Grace" a drunken man falls down a fight of stairs outside of a pub. The police are called but they do not seem that concerned neither does the mans friend who called the police. Later the man goes to talk to a priest about his sins but the priest does not seem forgiving. The man doesn't see how a whole life could be changed in one night by talking to a priest. "The Dead" was about love. Gabriel finds out that his wife was in love with another man before him. He had died waiting for her outside in the cold. Gabriel realizes that he does not love his wife as much as her first love did because he would not die for his wife. He has an epiphany and is the first one in these stories that realizes he is wasting his life away and needs to change things. If he doesn't make a change soon then his life will pretty much be worthless.

After reading The Dubliners I definitely am more educated about Ireland's history. I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed reading it but I learned a lot. It was interesting to read a different style of writing and it trying to understand it was very frustrating. In response to Jordan I agree. I felt that with almost every story you had to have background information to understand what was going on but we were not provided with that. I had to go to spark notes for every chapter to actually know what was going on and when I did not I felt as if I had no idea what we were talking about in class dicussions.

Jordan Wells - Week 4

After reading the Dubliners it is hard for me to tell if i like or dislike the series of stories. I felt like some of the stories were just not interesting at all. There were a select few that i enjoyed reading because they related to the world today. I liked how every story had some sort of epiphany in the story. I didn't like how the stories all had a negative aspect to them, i quess it's due to the time this book was written and Joyce's writting style. During this weeks reading, i liked reading "A Mother" more so than the other stories. Mrs. Kearney has a very practical view on life and she is used to being handed everything and usually gets what she wants. She ends up marrying her husband because she wanted her daughter, Kathleen, to receive a full payment for her performance. She did not marry him for love, it was more satisfaction for Kathleen. After reading "A Mother" it leaves you questioning about the integrity of Mrs. Kearney.

In response to Ashley,

I agree that the story "Ivy Day in the Commitee Room" is very confusing. I did not like how Joyce leaves it up to the reader to have backround knowledge on each character in the story. It made this story very difficult to read, as if the reader needs more difficulty reading these stories. I think there was just too many characters for a short story, there were too many characters to fully develope a sence of personallity. After reading this story i had to look up the summary on SparkNotes so i could get a better understanding of what exactly was going on. Even the SparkNotes was difficult to comprehend.