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The Dead By James Joyce Literary Analysis

1028 Words5 Pages

James Joyce, the master of detail, is not like any other writer out there. Joyce changed the dynamics of storytelling, showing there is more to written works than simply connecting. It is this loss of connection. Joyce creates characters that appear genuine, yet they are extremely vague. Readers do not know what the characters are up to, or better yet, what Joyce strives through his characters. With that, I will dissect the pros and cons of Joyce’s exquisite characterization in his most famous short story, “The Dead.” Also, I will look into the concept of aesthetics because I do not believe one can read any of Joyce’s stories without the term in mind due to the fact that there is no action of plot. Rather, “The Dead” is a piece of art. It is …show more content…

But again, where is the connection between a reader and the characters? Marilyn French argues, “The book is a full-scale examination of a way of thinking. In story after story, it is this that is shown, leaving the characters themselves half obscured, fragmented, fixed specimens preserved in their natural habitat in glass cases in the pathology lab” (444). Exactly. For example:
A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together and remember only their moments of ecstasy. (Joyce 185)
Beautiful, profound, nevertheless, an ideal. This passage reads flawlessly and illustrates Joyce’s whole notion of a story that no longer needs to connect on a pathos level, because of the aesthetic appeal. The loss of connection: “he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued to caress her hand” (191). Without a doubt, there is a pureness to Joyce’s characters, which I find odd because Joyce is a Modernist writer. I’m sure he is clearly aware people are not that pure. Meaning, his stories are based entirely on this so-called aesthetical experience. As Joyce quotes Shakespeare in Ulysses, “All events brought grist to his

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