Theme of Loss and Involuntary Memory in James Joyces The Dead - Research Paper Example

? Theme of Loss and Involuntary Memory in James Joyce’s “The Dead” Joyce’s tale “The Dead” depicts the loss and despair of a man who has developed feeling of disillusionment with his present stauts as he thinks that he has become ineffective and impotent. Gabriel Conroy’s seemingly complacent life faces an emotional shock when Gabriel comes to know that his beloved wife still cherishes the memories of her former lover. The song at his aunt’s party took his wife Gretta to her idyllic world of past where she felt ultimate bliss in the company of Michel Furey . The moment of epiphany at Gretta’s revelation has a serious effect on Gabriel’s mind and he, in a state of mourning, loses interest in his life and develops a feeling a disregard for his own “self”. The hero of the story “The Dead” apparently seems to be a star of the show at his aunts’ party. He has been given the honor of delivering after-dinner speech. But when we see this man in the company of people we find that this man lacks self confidence and is not sure what impact his speech would make on the people. Perhaps he is aware of the hollowness of his words. The bubble of his self confidence bursts when he comes to know that his wife compares him with her past lover who is dead. Gabriel felt ashamed that he was being compared with a dead person and in this comparison the dead person was regarded superior to him. The consciousness about his diminutive self made him melancholic and “he saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a penny-boy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealizing his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the mirror” (Joyce 150). This feeling of disillusionment and loss experienced by Gabriel is not the expression of individual rather it is going to be an elegy of a country or a nation. Joyce himself was writing his collection Dubliners in a broader context. Explaining his authorial intent for writing Dubliners, he states, “My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis” ( qtd. in Friedrich 421). The story “ The sisters” acted as the prologue of this elegiac epic while “ The dead” was its inevitable “coda”(421). Gabriel seems to be a mouthpiece of Joyce and Noon traces some autobiographical implications of Joyce’s personality in the character of Gabriel and finds that it is difficult for the reader to “ separate the ‘moral history’ of the city from the self-portrait of the artist”(254). Gabriel here is mourning the loss of the city (Dublin) which is the center of paralysis and like his writer shows anger and sorrow towards Ireland (Noon 255). Gabriel is reminded by Miss Ivors that he has lost his link with Irish identity and he has become a “ West Briton”. She suggests that he should feel ashamed of himself for that. He also likes to spend vacations in Europe instead of Ireland. His talk about Ireland offends nationalist in Miss Ivor and she leaves of party early in an indignant mood. Gabriel in his speech Gabriel’s constant resort to his past through his memory is actually the cause of his emotional distrust and his neurotic cynicism with his present situation. We try to recollect our past through an attempt to access our sub-conscious memory. This we do voluntarily. But sometimes our unconscious invades our consciousness through recurring bouts of involuntary memory. Joyce’s technique of “ stream of consciousness” works in this paradigm of voluntary and involuntary memory. Gabriel’s sense of loss is strengthened by these sudden infiltrations of involuntary memory which make him compare his present with his past. This comparison ultimately leads him to a situation where he develops a feeling of disillusionment with his present. This stylistic technique is the hallmark of James Joyce through which his characters come to recollect their past. This activity makes them compare their past and present which results in the revelations about the flaws of their personality. The consistent resort to memory makes them inactive as we Gabriel who is in the state of inertia. The recollection of past has different influence on different characters. It upsets Gabriel and makes him melancholic. On the other hand, for Gretta “the mention of a place name (Galway) and the singing of a song ("The Lass of Aughrim") associated with the person of Michael Furey coincide to give to memories an unusual vividness and urgent voice” (Friedrich 425). The impact of these memories is so great that the people are not ashamed of confessing their blissful taste. The states of mind experienced by different characters in “ The Dead” have explained in psychological terms by Sigmund Freud. Freud in his Mourning and Melancholia depicts that the feeling of loss is generally expressed in the form of mourning whereas mourning comes in response to a situation when a person loses a persona dear to him or is unable to get some cherished dream. Gabriel lost his “ self-image” his “ love” for Gretta. The dead Michael Furey has made him see death everywhere. He seems to mourn the impending death of her aunt Julia. He thinks in his mind, “One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age” (Joyce 152). His mourning made him a patient of melancholia which according to Freud is therapeutic condition and under the influence of this disease “ his soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend their wayward and flickering existence” ( 152). Freud discovers another symptom of melancholia under the influence of which the person exhibits “an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, and impoverishment of his ego on grand scale”(584). In mourning state, the person feels that world has become “poor and empty”, while a melancholic person experiences the poverty and emptiness of ego. Gabriel experiences this emptiness during his aunts’ party when his “self “is undermined by Lily and Miss Ivory. When he questions about the expected marriage of Lily, her answer hurt the self-respect of the protagonist. She says, “ The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you" (Joyce 121). Similarly his self pride is shaken when he realizes that Miss Ivory has “tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit’s eyes” ( Joyce 129). Gabriel is a modern man who has lost his connect with the higher ideals of past and has also lost his self confidence. His state of mind is far from normality and his mourning over his loss has made him melancholic. This melancholia is a state of neurosis, an unstable psychological condition. The man has no confidence in himself and is cynic about the world around him. In crowd of so many people, he feels loneliness and has a secret desire to escape from that company. His moments of self-realization further enhance his tragedy as he loses the last cherished thing of his life— the love of his wife. The dead of the past are far superior than the living of the present as they still haunt the memories of the people of the present and provide them some moments of solace. “The Dead” is not the story of a single man, rather it is the story of an era and a generations which is living an abnormal existence. Works Cited Friedrich, Gerhard. “The Perspective of Joyce’s Dubliners.” College English 26. 6(1965):421- 26. Print. Freud, Sigmund. “ Mourning and Melancholia” The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Print. Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Dover Publications, 1991. Print. Boesky, Amy . “The Maternal Shape of Mourning: A Reconsideration of "Lycidas".” Modern Philology 95. 4 (1998): 463-483. Print. Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. “ Mourning and Melancholia.” The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. 584-589. Print. Friedrich, Gerhard. “The Perspective of Joyce’s Dubliners.” College English 26. 6(1965):421- 26. JSTOR.Web. 16 December 2013. Joyce, James. “ The Dead.”Dubliners. New York: Dover Publications, 1991.119-152. Print. Noon, William T. "James Joyce: Unfacts, Fiction, and Facts. " PMLA76. 3 (1961: 254- 276.JSTOR. Web. 17 December 2013.  Read More