The article on deconstruction in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d really sparked my interest, especially with the ideas of repetition and chiasmus. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t noticed all the little details of wording before, so it was good to go back and see all these passages that related to one another in ways I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t previously thought of.<\/p>\n
One thing this article made me think about in particular was how the beginning and the ending of the story relate to each other. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is both the title of the story as well as the final line, so in a way the story ends in the same place that it started. Furthermore, from the beginning until the end, outwardly nothing has changed. The party went on as it always does, and afterwards everything returns to the way it was before. The only change is on the inside, because Gabriel now knows about Michael Furey, which he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t before. Also, Gabriel is a character that is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153presented as literally alive in the story but who can be said to be figuratively dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (223). Thus, his being figuratively dead yet literally alive at the end of the story also relates back to the beginning, where \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lily, the caretaker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s daughter, was literally run off her feet\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (21), in which case the terms \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153figuratively\u00e2\u20ac\u009d seemed to be interchanged to add emphasis to the phrase\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe same way one might say that Gabriel is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153literally\u00e2\u20ac\u009d dead in some way, to emphasize his figurative death.<\/p>\n
If this is really the case, and the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is circular and brings us right back to the beginning, then what exactly could we say has happened? Has Gabriel, or any of the characters, evolved or changed in some way, or are they all exactly the same as they were before the party, the same as they were before last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s party, and the one before that, and the very first one thirty years ago? As is the case with deconstruction, the text can support both views. Gabriel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s character, from beginning to end, makes everything about himself, even something that has nothing to do with him, such as in this statement towards the end: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (59). Thus, even at the end, we could say that he hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really changed at all from the beginning. However, in the same paragraph there is also evidence that his attitude might be changing: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (59). Is this really Gabriel seeing beyond his own identity, or is it merely him once again applying his identity to everything that is outside himself?<\/p>\n
The final sentence, also, can be used as evidence for both cases. Gabriel himself and the universe\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand everyone else in that universe, living and dead\u00e2\u20ac\u201dare juxtaposed in the very last line, so either interpretation\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor perhaps both\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcould well be right. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (59).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The article on deconstruction in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d really sparked my interest, especially with the ideas of repetition and chiasmus. I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t noticed all the little details of wording before, so it was good to go back and see all these passages that related to one another in ways I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t previously thought of. One thing … Continue reading Falling Faintly, or Faintly Falling?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2006\/325\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}