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The purpose of this paper is to analyze from both a literary and a psychoanalytic perspective the extremely condensed and ambiguous ending of one of Joyce's greatest short stories and the masterful epiphany which caps it. Following a traumatic encounter resulting from the discovery of his wife's adolescent love for a young man in her village, Gabriel, the main protagonist, is able to engage in a process of self-examination which will reconcile him with his wife's past and foster the resolution of a creative impasse.
The story has substantial autobiographic overtones. Joyce is very much identified with Gabriel, the main protagonist. It is likely therefore that the story was helpful to Joyce in working out certain concerns about his own creativity. Schwaber (1997) in a paper comparing Joyce's story with the film version wrote “critics retrospectively have seen ‘The Dead’ as signaling Joyce's readiness to move beyond that early manner and attitude to the more ample prose and affective range of his later work” (p. 333). In fact, Joyce's next work, A Portrait of
Acknowledgments. I am indebted to Dr. Harry Trosman for having pointed out some aspects of the ending of The Dead and for having reminded me of the ending of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Dr. James Spencer also contributed some critical ideas.
the Artist as a Young man, continues the task of self-exploration. Joyce was so troubled by his struggles with his own identity that he could only achieve his own literary goals by exiling himself from his native city which he both loved and loathed.