In his poem titled “The Dead”, James Joyce emphasizes several themes that include death, religion, and politics. With regards to the theme of death, James Joyce emphasizes these themes in the last paragraphs of his story to give his readers a message regarding the role of the countless dead in the lives of the living. This message is conveyed through both the main character’s (Gabriel’s) thoughts on death and his eerie awareness of a dead person’s impact on his personal life. This awareness then leads Gabriel to realize that the lives of all living people in the present are influenced by those who have lived in the past, thus creating a sense of interconnectedness between the living and the dead. The last five paragraphs of the story detail …show more content…
The snow that he sees falling outside the window is the same snow that he had previously been in when he felt joy and passionate love for Gretta as they entered their hotel room for the night. Joyce describes the snow as it falls on all parts of Ireland, but the importance of the snow surfaces in the last sentence. Joyce, still referring to Gabriel, writes, “his 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” (2311). Gabriel watches the snowflakes fall, and as they near the ground, their life comes to a close. These snowflakes, which dissolve once they hit ground where they die, represent how every person will do the same one day. Although snow is often regarded to be representative of beauty and peace, Joyce creates a tone of despair by describing snow in such a depressing way. The death of the snowflakes adds to the dismalness of life’s end as they symbolize the death that everyone will one day face, thus reinforcing Gabriel’s realization that everyone will eventually pass away and become