The Dead Reading Journal

The Dead

The Dead

                 In "The Dead" by James Joyce, the characters, the symbol and other factors all add up to give the readers an idea of paralysis of emotion or passion in people's lives. Gabriel, the main character, is emotionally dead and tainted in the secular society. The first evidence is that he has never truly loved his wife, Gretta; his attraction towards his wife was a mere fascination to a desire to control her. When Gabriel "watched her while she slept, as though he and she had never lived together as man and wife," he cried, thinking "he had never felt like how Michael Furry did towards any woman." This shows that he is emotionally dead, never having truly loved his wife at least and most of the women he had met in his life. Also, Gabriel shows such an arrogant and disdainful attitude to others, as seen by his behavior at the annual party: "Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now, for he was an expert carver and liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table." Such attitude makes him disconnected with the rest of the population, which makes him become "dead" to others. Furthermore, he tries to solve problems using the power of money, immediately giving some tips to the caretaker's daughter, Lily, when she got annoyed by Gabriel's words. This behavior of his shows that he is too tainted in the materialistic world and is emotionally deprived.

                   The death of Michael Furry too represents the absence of passion in people's lives. According to the description in the story, he had lived a passionate life and lived fully, probably doing what he truly wanted, with great enthusiasm. Thus, the death may signify the death of such passion in their lives.

                   

                   Apart from these two characters, others, especially those in the party seem to live the lives of deadening routines. Every year, the Morkan's party takes place, with the same events happening every year: Gabriel gives a speech, Freddy Malins arrives to the party drunk, everyone dances in the same routine steps, and everyone eats while chats. No one thinks of opening a different-colored party or doing something else than attending party to associate with people and eat. This state is similar to the anecdote told by Gabriel with the horse that circles around and around the mill.

In the story, the symbol of "snow" plays an important role in conveying the theme of the "dead" mentioned above. At the very last part of the story, Gabriel watches snow covering the whole village, touching both the dead and the living, including the grave of Michael Furry.

                    In spite of the theme of death covering the whole story, the author does try to lead the readers into thinking of a breakage of such theme. The snow melts someday, meaning the whole village that was covered by snow quietly will break its silence someday. Furthermore, epiphany came on to Gabriel; he realized that he doesn't have the actual power to control his wife's feelings and that he should no longer deny the past. He encounters such epiphany after talking to his wife who recalled the memory of Michael Furry, her ex-lover.

                    Both the title and the story itself seem to reflect the modern society quite thoroughly, since we are locked up in the same routines every day, living our lives with less passion and emotion than we did in the past, just as people in the Morkan's party. If anyone tries to get out of the system or of the norm, he or she must bear losing jobs, breaking relationship or get into lots of other troubles.

                    Of course, living in the routine is stable in terms of both personal level and societal level, since the stable system is important in developing a society gradually. However, it becomes a problem the routine system starts to lock up people's mind and body. This problem is particularly severe in Korea, with people blaming you for deviating from the norm even just a little bit. People expect similar ability, personality or outer appearance from everybody, making those who are out of the standards disabled or "weird" people. Little children who are repeatedly imprinted with such "names" lose confidence, often becoming psychologically disordered or going through difficulties without any reason. Such stereotypes led to tremendous popularity of plastic surgery, especially in Korea with the highest rate of plastic surgeries every year in OECD countries. This phenomenon is, again, due to the people's expectations of similar, beautiful outer appearance. Actually, if you walk across the Gangnam city for just 30 minutes while observing the faces of women in their 20s or 30s, you can easily notice that most of them have similar faces, just as the products mass manufactured in factories. There are tons of other examples as well. Korea is one of the countries with shortest period of fashion trend change.

                    This stereotype, or perhaps, culture, that people want to play in the same routine and be like everybody else is actually psychologically inevitable. Moreover, humans are social animals, so it is natural that people desire to follow each other. Nevertheless, the state the stereotype has gone too much and almost to an irreversible degree in the modern society. The reason why it is especially a critical problem in Korea is the culture; the culture makes us disabled if we don't follow the majority. Usually, people don't respect distinctiveness of individuals. If anyone tries wearing a quite different style of clothes than anybody else, if anyone looks quite different from others, or if anyone behaves in a different way, people immediately start to talk in whispers to each other, insult in the face or even take photographs.

                     The most representative example that shows our stereotypes is an example of glasses in Korean society. In my parents' generation, those who wore glasses or had bad eyesight were considered "disabled." If anyone shows up in public with glasses on, people used to pick on him or her, even including the teachers and friends. However, since then, the average eyesight of Korean population has been getting worse as people started to encounter a lot of electronic devices such as television, cell phones and computers, as well as establishing bad habits. Eventually, more and more people are wearing glasses and no one calls someone disabled just for wearing glasses.

                     Those who cannot use their legs are considered handicapped because there are more people whose legs work properly, and those with hearing impairment are considered disabled because there exist more people whose ears work properly.

                     As "the dead" tells us, we should no longer try to be similar with others, or live indistinct lives. Instead, we should sometimes make decisions that are out of the norm if you think it is right.