Not_Your_Average_Feast_-_Essay_on_the_Dead

Not Your Average Feast Parties are events that people are eager to attend. After a difficult and painstaking week of work or school, a party to start off the weekend is a highly anticipated event for a person. Parties and gatherings also occur in celebration of special holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. These gatherings serve to make family tight-knit during the special holiday seasons. These gatherings also are meant to bring happiness and joy into the lives of many people. Contrary to a typical party, the Morkan family gathering was one of sorrowful revelation. Unlike the happiness and good qualities that are usually revealed by a person at a party, the qualities of the characters at the Morkan family gathering are those of sadness and distress. The dying state of Ireland is reflected in the characters that attend the feast, a dying state with little hope of a turnaround. The feast serves to not only exemplify the dying state of Ireland, but also showcase the inner death of Gabriel Conroy, after he learns his wife’s revelation of the past. As seen in the vast majority of Joyce’s previous short stories in his collection Dubliners, Ireland is thought of as a country of corruption and failure. Joyce’s title of this short story, “The Dead”, showcases how lifeless some characters in the story are, a reflection of the dying state of Ireland. The dying state of Ireland is showcased by the Morkan sisters, Kate and Julia. Aunt Julia is described as having grey hair, and “grey also, with darker shadows, was her large, flaccid face.” Aunt Kate is described as being more vivacious than Aunt Julia, with a face like a “shriveled red apple.” The diction through the words like flaccid and shriveled, and the description of Aunt Julia as having grey hair and a grey face, show the aging of the Irish community. This aging that unfortunately leads to death, death that hinders any hope of Irish recovery. Death of Ireland is also revealed through Freddy Malins, with his “heavy-lidded eyes” and “scanty hair”, making him look extremely tired. This tiredness comes from his obvious drunkenness, a drunkenness that plagues all of Ireland. The Irish consume their time with alcohol, and blow all their money on their “coveted” substance, so much that hope for Irish recovery is just a dream. The feast of Epiphany, however, brought the biggest display of death through Gabriel Conroy. During the feast, Gabriel’s wife, Gretta, was reminded of her old love, Michael Furey, when the song, The Lass of Aughrim ,was played by Mr. Bartell D’Arcy. Gretta told Gabriel that Michael Furey died at age seventeen. When asked the cause of Michael Furey’s death, Gretta replied, “I think it was for me.” Upon hearing this, “a vague terror seized Gabriel,” and he realized that his love was inferior to the love Michael Furey showed Gretta. This realization that his love will never match Michael’s love makes him decide to head westward. The west is where the sun sets in the sky, meaning the world loses its light for the day. This setting in the west and loss of light symbolize death, and this desire to go westward shows that Gabriel, from this new information that he has learned about his wife’s former lover, has died inside. This is seen by his own identity “fading out into a grey impalpable world.” He realizes that he could never do what Michael Furey did and die for someone. Also, when Gabriel realizes he has to go west, snow is falling outside. The snow falling symbolizes not only the shroud of death covering the country of Ireland, but also the shroud of death that now covers Gabriel. The Morkan feast is a very different event. The characters that attend the meal all bring their own characteristics to the table, characteristics that promote the lifelessness and dying state of the country of Ireland. Unlike a gathering that serves to unite families, this gathering brings out the negative aspects of the Morkan clan, and the country of Ireland. The drunkenness of Freddy Malins and the imagery of the elder Morkan sisters showcase the corruption and dying state of Ireland. But, the Morkan feast affected Gabriel Conroy the most. His realization that he had to go westward shows that he has died inside, because he can’t give up his life for his wife, Gretta, like Michael did. This inner dying of Gabriel also shows that Ireland has little hope for recovery, and shows that the author, James Joyce, truly believes that Ireland will never be able to see the turnaround from corruption that it desperately needs.