From the book Dubliners, we’ve read a lot of short stories that happened there. The Dead is the last story in the book. Even though Dubliners contains short stories, this story is quite long and is the longest story in the collection. T. S. "one of the greatest short stories ever written", thus it follows how good this story is and why we should think deeper through the story. It centers on Gabriel Conroy and the relationships he has with his friends and family. Throughout the story, Gabriel faced three shocks from the caretaker’s daughter Lily, his colleague Molly Ivors, and his wife Gretta. All the things that they told Gabriel have a large impact on him and make him very stunned. So, the whole story is around the three shocks and the details that are hidden behind the communications.
From the three shocks, we can see how important women are in the story, helping the author to show his viewpoint. Obviously, the three shocks are all from women and their actions somehow affect Gabriel. The whole story is written from the point of view of a man, but it emphasizes the status of women in Irish society, and what men's attitude towards them. Lily and Miss Ivors both blame Gabriel for something, whether for being a male or for not loving his own nation. This shows that both of them made Gabriel feel shocked and surprised that he could hear things like that from two women. From his dialogue with his wife, he might feel humiliated since in her wife’s heart, is a dead person but not him as a husband. Even though he feels very humiliated by the failure of reality, he still thinks that he can dominate women just like what other men think in society. They use this to enhance their sense of confidence and think they are somehow more noble and valuable.
We already know that Miss Ivors blamed Gabriel for not loving his own nation, so another part that went throughout the story is escaping from their own country. Escaping from their own country means liking foreign things and being obsequious to foreigners. It’s usually being blamed by others in the country. In the story, Gabriel said, “I’m sick of my own country, sick of it”, and also, he’s writing articles for The Daily Express, visiting other countries, speaking other languages, etc. He seems to hate everything in Ireland and like everything except in Ireland. He pursues fashions from other countries, reading and using Robert Browning's poems instead of Irish writers, but he never realized that he really wants to escape from Ireland. He treats other European countries or cultures as idealized, sinking into them, and this significantly affects his attitude toward his nation. However, Gabriel is not the only one who wants to escape from the nation, and even, his desire and obsession are less obvious than others, so the thoughts of escaping from their own nation aren’t rare.
Focus back to the title of the story, The Dead, it noticeably shows that the whole story basically is about death. Death is something we must face in our life, and we can’t know when somebody died. Death could be separated into three kinds, which are the real dead, the walking dead, and the dying. The simplest is the real dead, which means people are no longer alive. For example, Patrick Morkan, Gabriel’s mother, Grandpa Patrick and his horse, and Michael Furey are all people who really died. Their death somehow influences others as Patrick’s death changes the lifestyle of the sisters, and because Michael died for Gretta, makes Gabriel feel very unbalanced. For the walking dead and the dying, they’re Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne who are alcoholics so are the walking dead and Aunt Julia who is too old and people foresee her death. However, when Gabriel finally awakens, he realizes death is universal, and he’s living meaningless.
To sum up, in the story The Dead, the author wrote about the things that are lyric and in a kind of negative mood but accepts all the things related to death. There must be reasons for why T. S. said this is "one of the greatest short stories ever written". We can know that women and society, escaping from the nation, and death are all parts that build up the story and make us consider them. Not only Gabriel, the author is also more likely to show the whole society that is like Gabriel, it’s more like a criticism of the whole society. Talking about the dead, it’s not only sentimental but also to make it more lively.
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