The Dead

This eBook edition of "THE DEAD" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. The story reflects the tension in early 20th Century Ireland in a particular lyrical narrative that echoes in a haunting and melodic way the melancholy of life and death. The story centers on Gabriel Conroy, a university professor, on the night of the Morkan sisters' annual dance and dinner in the first week of January 1904, a celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany. Gabriel, favorite nephew of the sisters, arrives late to the party with his wife Gretta, where he is eagerly received. Gabriel worries about the speech he is to give, especially that it contains too many academic references for his audience. He is confronted by Miss Ivors, an Irish nationalist, about his publishing a weekly literary column in a newspaper with unionist sympathies, and she teases him as a "West Briton," that is, a supporter of English political control of Ireland… James Joyce (1882-1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses, a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he utilized.