Order 1342977: Critical Response/Informal Paper

University of Tulsa

Gabriel and Michael: The Conclusion of "The Dead" Author(s): Florence L. Walzl Source: James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall, 1966), pp. 17-31 Published by: University of Tulsa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25486604 Accessed: 05-04-2018 01:16 UTC

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Gabriel and Michael: The Conclusion of 'The Dead"1

by Florence L. Walz! Dubliners as a collection and "The Dead" as a narrative both

culminate in the great epiphany of Gabriel Conroy, the cosmic vision of a cemetery with snow falling on all the living and the dead. As an illumination, it follows Gabriel's meeting with the spirit of Michael Furey and seems to evolve from it. Though commentators generally agree on the structural design of Dubliners and the plot pattern of "The Dead," they have not agreed on the interpretation of this conclusion, or even of the principal symbol, the snow, which to some represents Ufe, to others death, and to still others life or death depending on the context of the passage. Such lack of agree ment at the crux of a work seems surprising. The purpose of this study is to suggest that the ambiguity of this conclusion was deliberate on Joyce's part and that it arose from the history and development of Dubliners as a collection.

The context in which "The Dead" is read affects interpretations of the story. For the reader who approaches "The Dead" by way of the preceding fourteen stories of frustration, inaction and moral paralysis, this story is likely to seem a completion of these motifs, and Gabriel's epiphany a recognition that he is a dead mem ber of a dead society. But when "The Dead" is read as a short story unrelated to Dubliners, the effect is different: the story seems one of spiritual development and the final vision a redemption.

A survey of the critiques of "The Dead" shows significant dif ferences in interpretation.2 Explications which discuss the story and its final vision primarily as the conclusion of the book as a whole, such as those of Hugh Kenner and Brewster Ghiselin, tend to in terpret the snow vision as Gabriel's self-identification with the dead.3 However, structural analyses of the story per se, such as those of Kenneth Burke, David Daiches, Allen T?te, and others, generally agree that the story is one of maturation and that the snow vision is a rebirth experience.4 Though studies of the symbolism vary greatly, a number, among them the critiques of Ellmann, Magalaner and Kain, and Tindall, note ambivalence in the symbols, or "different perspectives" in the imagery.5 All commentators agree on the es sential significance of the snow vision both for Dubliners and "The Dead."

When Joyce left Ireland in 1904, he took with him the manu scripts of a number of the Dubliners stories and the following year completed a work that consisted of fourteen stories. It did not in clude "The Dead," which was not written until 1907. It was this

17

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18 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

version that Joyce described as "a chapter of the moral history" of Ireland and as having its setting in Dublin because that city seemed to him the "centre of paralysis."6 There is no question that this work represents Joyce's view of Ireland at the time he left his native land?as a moribund country that destroyed or paralyzed its chil dren because of its provinciality and conformism.

A number of studies have demonstrated Dubliners to have an organized inner structure.7 The stories are placed in four chronologi cal groups, which Joyce described as an order of "childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life"; and all develop a dominant paralysis symbolism.8 The 1905 version was highly symmetrical, consisting of an opening triad of stories of individual children ("The Sisters/' "An Encounter," and "Araby"), a quartet of stories deal ing with youthful men and women ("Eveline." "After the Race," "Two Gallants," and "The Boarding House"), another quartet picturing mature characters ("A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," "Clay," and "A Painful Case"), and a final triad dealing with public groups in public situations ("Ivy Day in the Committee Room," "A Mother," and "Grace"). The first and final triads ob viously balance individuals and groups, and all the stories in the middle quartets are arranged in pairs contrasting sex, age, and social type or status. Also, the characterizations have a patterning that is unusual in short story collections. Though the protagonist of each story is a different character, all?children or adults?are vari ants of a basic type, a central ever)man figure. Since each main character is older in the first eleven tales, a life cycle is presented. This chronological structure is matched to a thematic one of hemiplegia. The result is a progression in which children are de picted as disillusioned, youths as frustrated or trapped, men and women as passive and non-productive, and social groups as com pletely static. The central image of the book is a creeping paralysis that ends in a dead society.

Analyses of the individual stories have shown that the paralysis motif tends to be developed by a number of related images, all variations on a basic death-life symbolism. They are stasis versus action, darkness versus light, cold versus warmth, and blindness versus perception. Prior to discussion of the handling of these images in "The Dead," their use in the 1905 Dubliners needs brief analysis. As a general pattern in the early version, they present a clear death symbolism.

Inaction or arrest imagery is the most obvious variant of the paralysis motif. Joyce devises plots in which characters are im mobilized by weakness or circumstance, symbolizes the resulting psychological situations by imagery of traps and cages, and em ploys settings with constricted spaces, such as confessionals, cells,

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FLORENCE L WALZL 19

cabins, narrow rooms, and little houses?all suggestive of graves or vaults (e. g.. "Eveline/* "A Little Cloud," or "Clay") In addition, Ghiselin has pointed out a variation of this stasis-action imagery in the directional symbolism in Dubliners9: movement eastward gen erally representing youthful attempts to escape life in Dublin (''An Encounter,1' "Araby," and "Eveline"); circular movement or essent ial immobility at the center of the city, the frustration of more mature characters ("Two Gallants." "The Boarding House," "A Little Cloud." and ''Counterparts"): and movements westward a drift toward death of the elderly ("Clay" and "A Painful Case"). The stories of public life in the 1905 version all depict groups of people sitting inertly in public places. It should be noted that m this pattern of movement, Joyce is using traditional imagery that associates life with dawn and the east and death with twilight and the west.

Darkness and cold are also used either separately or in com bination throughout Dubliners for death suggestions in contrast to light-warmth-life imagery. The opening pages set the tone with the repetitions of the words night, darkened, and paralysis, and

m the succeeding stories images of shadow, mist, dimness, dust, gloom, and night appear as scenic details and symbols. Changes from light to darkness and warmth to cold (or the reverse) some times parallel the action of the plot (e.g.. "An Encounter." "Araby," "Two Gallants," and "A Painful Case"). Twilight and night scenes have symbolic significance in most of the stories, and in the latter part of the book darkness and chill imagery is cumulative.

Blindness and sight imagery is also evident as a pattern. First, the tales, examined in succession, show a steady decline in the perceptivity of the characters as to the reality of their situations. The youths are painfully aware of their disappointments; the more mature suffer but lack insight; characters in the final stories seem totally insensitive. As a result the epiphanies of these final stories are usually manifestations for the reader rather than the character. In addition, throughout Dubliners Joyce uses frequent eye imagery, a

practice consistent with his view of the epiphany as an enlighten ment. At the climactic moment of revelation, lack of insight on the part of the character may be indicated by eyes that are dim, blinded, or unseeing (e.g.. "Eveline," "After the Race," or "Clay"). By con trast a sudden view, a flash of light or color, may bring enlighten ment (e.g., "A Paintful Case").

These imagistic patterns are in general consistent throughout the 1905 version of Dubliners. Though the same images appear in "The

Dead," they are treated differently in that story. The end of the 1905 version was carefully planned to round out

the beginning. "The Sisters" opens Dubliners with a story of de tective religion and a picture of a priest dying of paralysis, a figure

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20 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

symbolic of clerically dominated Ireland, according to Joyce's brother.10 "Grace" ends this version with an ironic story of faith and a picture of a corrupt priest preaching a materialistic sermon to a group of morally insensible Dubliners. Both congregation and cleric exemplify Joyce's judgment that Ireland is spiritually dead.

Dubliners did not appear in the 1905 version. A series of disagree ments over revisions of the stories delayed publication. When the book was finally published in 1914, a new story, "The Dead," provided the conclusion.

"The Dead" is markedly different from the earlier stories in several important respects. It is not only a longer, more fully developed narrative, but it presents a more kindly view of Ireland. Exile had modified Joyce's views of his native land.11 He had found Italian cities like Pola and Trieste provincial in their own way, and Rome had seemed to him as much a city of the dead as Dublin. He com plained that Rome lived as if by exhibiting its "grandmother's corpse."12 He now felt that his picture of Ireland had been "un necessarily harsh," and that he had not shown Ireland's "ingenuous insularity" and unique "hospitality."13 "The Dead" reflects these

modified views, but the changes presented Joyce a problem. For in adding "The Dead" to Dubliners, he was not merely appending an other narrative to an ordinary collection of short stories: he was adding to a highly structured book already complete, a different kind of story with a different kind of conclusion.

As a narrative, "The Dead" has a plot of oscillation and reversal which mirrors the psychological changes in the chief character. The protagonist is Gabriel Conroy, a Dublin schoolteacher, who, with his wife, Gretta, attends a Christmas party given by his two old aunts, the Miss jMorkans. During the evening a series of small events makes him alternate between emotions of confidence and inferiority. His self-esteem is undermined by the remarks of a bitter maid, LUy, by the criticisms of a fellow teacher, Molly Ivors, and by the doubts he secretly feels. On the other hand, his ego is bolstered by his aunts' dependence on him, his presiding at the carving, and his making the after-dinner speech. The attention, the festivities, and the prospect of an unaccustomed night at a hotel arouse in Gabriel romantic emotions and memories of his wife that have long lain dormant. When later at the hotel he approaches her amorously, he finds that she too is remembering a past love, but it is a different love from his. It is for a boy of her youth, Michael Furey, now dead. The sudden realization that for his wife the memory of a long dead lover has greater reality than does the physical presence of her living husband precipitates a crisis of self-evaluation in Gabriel. For the first time he gains an insight into his own identity and that of his society. In imagination he has a confrontation with his long

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FLORENCE L. WALZL 21

dead rival, and from this meeting evolves the snow vision which ends the story and the book. Obviously "The Dead" is a story of insight and realization, and

it seems to reverse the pattern of increasing insensibility that Dub liners otherwise traces. Nonetheless, in a number of ways, "The Dead" was clearly de

signed to provide an appropriate conclusion for Dubliners. Com mentators have tended to apply the terms coda and thematic reprise to it.14 Structurally it fits neatly into the tales of public life depicting groups of provincial and conformist people. Its characters tend to recall earlier figures. Its atmosphere, despite the holiday scene, be comes one of funereal gloom as the conversation is devoted in creasingly to the past, to people dead and gone, and discussions of death, monks, and coffins. There are constant intimations that the group will soon re-convene for a wake in these same rooms. In its own way, it rounds out the book as "Grace" had the 1905 version. Its setting, a gathering at the home of two ancient sisters, seems a scenic repetition of "The Sisters," and Gabriel's final vision of a cemetery in the night is a fitting close for a book that began as a deathwatch outside the house of a dying man.

Despite these thematic repetitions, Joyce's problem in integrat ing "The Dead" into Dubliners was not easily solved. For "The

Dead" is a story of maturation, tracing the spiritual development of a man from insularity and egotism to humanitarianism and love. No earlier character in Dubliners undergoes a comparable change or has such an enlightenment. It cannot be fit with easy logic into the dominant paralysis pattern of Dubliners. I suggest that Joyce made his accommodation by two means: first, use of ambiguous or am bivalent images that mirror the oscillation in Gabriel's character, and second, by means of a conclusion in which a series of key images, all employed earlier in both the story and the book as a

whole, operate to reflect one set of meanings from Dubliners as a total entity and a slightly different set from "The Dead" as an in dividual story.

Gabriel's final epiphany, comprising his ghostly meeting with Michael Furey ?njJ his vision of the snow, is the chief means by which Joyce effects' this resolution. Every image in it is a symbol, and since each symbol is multi-faceted in reflecting earlier am biguities, the epiphany allows for either a life or death interpretation. Paradoxical images of arrest and movement, darkness and light, cold and warmth, blindness and sight, are used in this conclusion to re call both the central paralysis-death theme of Dubliners as a collec tion and the rebirth-life theme of "The Dead" as a narrative. The ambiguity of this ending succeeds because Joyce had al

ready described ambivalent attitudes on the part of the hero, largely

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22 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

b\ means of these same symbols, used in shifting, paradoxical ways. To illustrate: at first view "The Dead" seems to employ the pat tern^ of arrest and motion used earlier in Dubliners. For instance

constricted motion is definitely associated with the frustrated Ga briel. The most obvious instance is the family anecdote that he dramatizes of the treadmill horse that on a Sunday drive in Dublin insisted on going round and round and round King William's statue. Though Gabriel does not realize it, he is acting out sym bolically the vicious circle of his own daily round in Dublin. Also, the directional symbolism seems that of the earlier tales: the east is the direction of Gabriel's holiday escapes to freedom on the continent, the center of Dublin is made the scene of his revelation, and the west is associated with his final vision of the graveyard. However, it soon becomes evident that Joyce is developing, side by side with this east-west symbolic pattern, another one that is its opposite in certain ways. In this system the east suggests the old, traditional and effete; the west, the new. primitive, and vital. These symbols are largely developed through the characters. The story develops a contrast between the cultivated, urban East Coast so ciety and people from the wilder Gaelic west of Ireland. The Dub liners are shown as a dull, elderly group. As exemplified at the party, the upper middle class Dubliner seems commonplace and his cul ture mediocre. The conversation is stereotyped, the famed Irish hos pitality consists chiefly of eating and drinking, and the arts seem provincial. The one writer present produces critical rather than creative work; the pianist's playing is pretentious sound without substance. The '"Three Graces of the Dublin musical world" are a spinster and two ancient ladies whom Gabriel privately and hypocritically admits are "only two ignorant old women."15 In contrast, the westerners are more simple, direct and passionate. For example, several of the strongest characters are associated with the west, among them Gabriel's argumentative colleague, Miss Ivors, who urges him to visit the west to learn Gaelic and see the real Ireland; his attractive wife, Gretta, who has come from Connacht and is "country cute" (p. 187); and above all, Gabriel's ghostly rival, Michael Furey, who is strongly identified with the west country. The character contrast between east and west is made explicit in the opposition between Gabriel's mother and his wife, the two principal women in his life. His dead mother is identified as a chief representative of the cultivated Dublin milieu. The "brains carrier*' of the family (p. 186), she saw that her sons were educated for the proper professions. She exists in the story as a photograph in which she holds a book. She opposed Gabriel's marriage to a girl from the west country. In contrast, his wife, Gretta, seems rep resentative of a more natural west. She is always associated with

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FLORENCE L WALZL 23

color and perfume, music and stars, and her reactions always seem direct and ingenuous. It should be noted that in this second pattern of east-west symbolism Joyce is developing traditional sym bolism, also. From the Ulysses myth to the American mystique of the West, the east has represented the old and tried, and the west the new and unknown. Westward movement in this association tends

to symbolize man's Utopian possibilities and connote search and adventure. Thus, in "The Dead" Joyce deliberately builds an am bivalent symbolism of motion and direction that in some contexts equates the east with dawn and life and the west with sunset and death, but in other contexts associates the east with the old and sterile and the west with the new and vital.

The darkness-cold and light-warmth images are also developed paradoxically in shifting patterns of meaning.16 Several episodes will illustrate this. When Gabriel first comes out of the dark and cold into the light and warmth of the Morkan house, his marked insulation against the cold and snow by means of heavy clothes aqd galoshes suggests a conventional symbolism which associates heat with life But ironically the lights within seem to illuminate a society that is stuffy and dead rather than warm and alive, and Gabriel soon longs for the cold fresh air and the great darkness outside, which now seem to represent the vitality of nature and perhaps also the living culture of Europe beyond the seas. Later as the characters prepare to leave the party, there is a shift back in the symbolism. The "cold, fragrant air" (p. 177) is no longer emphasized, but seemingly casual remarks about the cold and night build up a death-journey symbolism. The departing guests remark about the sharp wind, the bitter cold, the snow which is "general all over Ireland," and the fact that "everybody has colds" (p. 211). Mary Jane shivers as she tells the leave-takers that she "would not like to face . . . [their] journey home" (p. 207). The repetitive farewells of "Good-night," "Good-night, again," "Good night, all. Safe home," "Good-night. Good-night" (the word is re peated ten times) hint of a "last journey." These suggestions are imagistic preparations for the scene in the hotel bedroom where the death imagery is unmistakable. The box-like room, the removal of a candle, the darkness, the chill, and the bed on which Gretta lies, all build the impression of a vault where the dead rest frozen on their biers. There is no question that the symbols have shifted back and forth in these episodes.

These shifting images of darkness-cold and light-warmth are supported by marked ambiguity in the handling of the snow imag ery. The snow mirrors the very paradox Joyce is developing. For snow exposed to heat turns into water, but exposed to cold solidi fies into ice. (Water is an archetypal life symbol, and ice a tradi

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24 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

tional death symbol.) In "The Dead" the snow symbol unites all the other images.

The coldness and warmth imagery developed in connection with Gabriel is extraordinarily complex. Every commentator on "The Dead" has remarked how the snow is associated with Gabriel from his first appearance to his final vision. Throughout the story a complicated interplay of attraction and repulsion is evident in his attitudes. Though he boasts of the galoshes that insulate him from the snow, he also longs for physical contact with it. Though he is moved by the sight of the snow on the roofs, he is irritated by the slush under foot. Though he thinks of statues and monuments covered with snow during the evening, he never sees the relevance of these pictures to himself. (It is the reader that notes the likeness to the opening description of Gabriel.) His final epiphany involves a vision in which snow is both falling and melting. The inherent flexibility of snow as a symbol allows Joyce to shift symbolic sug gestions rapidly in these contexts. The warmth imagery will be dis cussed in connection with the angel symbolism.

The imagery of blindness and sight combines ambivalence and ambiguity. It is used initially to indicate Gabriel's lack of insight and his unconscious avoidance of reality, but it later is employed to describe the gradual enlargement of perspective that leads to his final cosmic vision. Images of eyes, eyesight, glasses, mirrors and windows appear in the story in varied and paradoxical meanings. Of all these images, the mirror is most significant and like the snow it tends to shift its meaning with the context of the passage. For the mirror in "The Dead" represents successively illusion, human reality, and intuitive vision.

The first use of reflection imagery is Narcissistic, and here Joyce is working in a rich literary tradition that extends from Ovid through Shakespeare's Richard II and Milton's Eve to modern psychological fiction. The story opens with a protagonist preoccupied by his own image. How he appears to other people engrosses Ga briel, to the point that his sense of his own identity becomes the view of him reflected from his aunts, the guests at the party, and even the maid, Lily. His concern for a flattering self-image is shown imagistically by eyesight-glasses references. Gabriel's eyes are de scribed as "screened" by his "scintillattingl" or "glimmering" glasses. His "delicate and restless eyes" are dazzled by the "glitter" from the polished floor and bright chandelier (pp. 178, 186, and 218). In short, his view of the world is distorted by the reflections from his environment, and Gabriel is unable to see reality as it is. Since his eyes are easily irritated, he goes several times to the windows to look out on the darkness, actions suggesting his psychological un* certainty. This Narcissistic imagery culminates with his first direct

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FLORENCE L WALZL 25

look into a mirror. Joyce has both Gretta and Gabriel look into a large cheval-glass shortly after they reach the hotel. What Gretta sees is not immediately revealed, for she turns away "serious and weary" (p. 216). Gabriel looks in the mirror and what he sees is an illusion?a "broad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always puzzled him . . . , and his glimmering gilt-rimmed eye-glasses" (p. 218). His blind egotism masks the truth from him, for actually this image is the pompous front he has been at the party. The mirror has reflected a flattering distortion for him. But the same mirror will later reflect reality. After Gabriel learns the truth that he has not been the only love in his wife's life and that his sense of possession of Gretta has been only an illusion, he again looks in the mirror and this time he does see reality in an extended view that includes himself and his society. This time he sees "a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his aunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians and idealising his own clownish lusts" (p. 220). This is the figure he has really cut that evening. Moreover, he now identifies himself v^ith the social group that he has secretly despised and yet feared all evening long: he is a "pitiable fatuous fellow" in a society of "vulgarians."17 Finally, at the end of Dubliners the mirror seems to shift significance again and becomes a reflection of intuitive or visionary truth. After Gabrie? has realized the nature of his limita tions and acknowledged that as a man he has never really lived, he turns humbly to the window where he had earlier imagined his rival standing. The physical scene of falling snow dwindles and dissolves for him, and the cosmic snow vision replaces it. In this scene the mirror has become a reflecting window, and ultimate reality is shown in an image of a cemetery in the snow. The sym bolism seems highly Dantean in its concept of the glass as a re flection of transcendent reality and in its presentation of that reality through a symbolic image. In the final canto of the Paradiso Dante, after perceiving an image, achieved a direct view of Being. Whether or not Gabriel does at the end of "The Dead" is one of the cruxes of Dubliners.

The climax of Dubliners is the imaginary conformation of Ga briel and Michael from which the snow vision evolves. At this point both characters become larger than life, and it is clear that both are mythic figures and archetypes. At the first level they are characters in a story, rivals in a love triangle, the only unusual aspect of which is that one of the rivals has long been dead. At another level, they are archetypes. At a still different level their opposition is repre sented by their angel names and the legendary associations with each.

At the narrative level, the Gabriel-Michael opposition is illustrated

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26 TAMES TOYCE QUARTERLY

in the scene at the Gresham Hotel. This episode marks a final phase of Gabriel Conroy's development as a character, for in it Gabriel moves from blindness and conceit to self-knowledge and sympathy for others. His enlightenment is effected by Gretta's tell ing him the story of Michael Furey, the frail boy who, because he loved her more than life, left his sick bed on a night of rain and cold to come to see her. Gabriel's sudden realization that he has never experienced a love like this brings with it the discovery that he has never lived to the full depth of being. Hence to his wife he is less real than Michael Furey, this shade of her youth. Joyce creates a polarity in the reader's mind between the lover and the husband. Both are shown as seeking the woman's love in the night, the dead lover standing in the falling rain, happy in his moment of love; the living husband, frustrated and unhappy in the dark, vault-like hotel room watching the snow fall. Ironically the ghost seems alive, the man dead. Here the Michael-Gabriel contrast opposes life-in-death to death-in-life.

As an archetype, Gabriel is the central everyman figure of Dub linerv in its final configuration. In numerous ways he brings together in his character and life all the earlier protagonists. In his sensitivity and insecurity he recalls the little boys of "The Sisters," "An En counter," or "Araby." whose quests for answers end in disappoint ment. He seems a projection of the youths like Eveline Hill, Jimmy Doyle, and Lenehan, who lack the energy to undertake vital careers and the courage to leave Ireland. He is not betrayed like Doran of "The Boarding House," but he has himself betrayed his own best possibilities. Like Little Chandler and Farrington he is caught in a dull round of domesticity and uncreative work. He is like Maria of "Clay" in that he has never experienced the full meaning of love, and he is clearly on his way to becoming a prim, fuss-budgety Mr. Duffy. When he recognizes himself as a "fatuous fellow," he has pronounced his own identification with all the "sentimentalists," "vulgarians," pennyboys, pretentious fools, and ineffectual Dub liners of "Ivy Day," "A Mother," and "Grace." In short, Gabriel Conroy is The Dubliner. And he is Man.

Michael Furey also is more than a character and an angel namesake. This should not be surprising, since in a number of earlier Dubliners stories, great names of myth and legend, heroes and God figures, are invoked as ironic contrasts. (Such examples as the Christ-Judas references in "Two Gallants," the Mary con trast of "Clay," and the Parnell and disciple figures of "Ivy Day" come readily to mind.) A phrase in Gretta's description of him identifies him. Speaking of Michael's end, she says, "I think he died for me" (p. 220). The phrase echoes the words of the Poor Old Woman who is Ireland in disguise in Yeats's Cathleen ni

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FLORENCE L WALZL 27

Houlihan. Speaking of her patriot-lover, "yellow-haired Donough that was hanged in Galway," she says, "He died for love of me."18

Michael represents Ireland?an older traditional Ireland of the Gaelic west, of Galway and the Aran Islands, an Ireland that Gabriel is unwilling to visit or to view as important. Michael is a father land figure. But he is more. The phrase "he died for me" and the picture of him standing under a tree identifies him as Christ.19 He is a symbol of sacrificial love in both configurations. To love a cause or a person more than life is the action of the hero and the God, and Michael is so identified. Gabriel the Dubliner has been incapable of such sacrifice. At this point, a question seems pertinent: who is the betrayer and who the betrayed? Dubliners as a whole work suggests that Ireland betrays its children. "The Dead" in this sym bolic identification seems to imply that the Dubliner betrays Ire land. This is only one of the ambiguities that "The Dead" offers. The central ambiguity of "The Dead" is the conclusion, and it

is developed in large part by the Archangel Gabriel and Michael contrasts. Several polarities between Michael and Gabriel as angels namesakes appear.20 The first involves a difference in rank between these angels. In the angelic hierarchies, Michael as an archangel has precedence over Gabriel as an angel, a relationship which is prob ably exemplified in the ascendancy of Michael over Gabriel in Gret ta's consciousness. The second polarity involves the elements in nature which these two angels represent. In both Jewish and Chris tian occult tradition the four chief angels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, are correspondent with the four elements, seasons, direc tions, and winds. Michael represents symbolically the element water, is called "the prince of snow," and is associated with silver. Gabriel represents fire, is called "the prince of fire," and associated with gold.21 These suggestions all appear in "The Dead." A third polarity involves a contrast in New Testament tradition: Michael is primarily the angel of the Last Judgment and Gabriel of the Annunciation. All these motifs join in clusters of shifting symbols in the final sec tion of "The Dead," especially the scene at the Gresham Hotel, which introduces the snow epiphany.

This episode presents a paradoxical contrast between the "living" ghost, Michael, and the "dead" man of flesh, Gabriel. This paradox affects certain images, deriving from the angelic traditions, that are applied to Michael and Gabriel. Michael, named for the angel of water and snow, is always associated with cold, sometimes in combination with rain, sometimes with snow. His memory is first evoked by Gretta when she hears the song, "The Lass of Aughrim" with its picture of a loved one deserted and standing in the cold. Then in her story of Michael, she describes how, when he came to say goodbye to her, he stood shivering in the streaming rain under

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28 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

a tree outside her window. Finally, through a series of imaginative suggestions, Joyce creates in Gabriel's (and the reader's imagination) the illusion that throughout the whole scene in the hotel room, the ghost of Michael is standing outside the window in the snow under the gas lamp looking in. These suggestions come to an eerie climax when the "few light taps" of snow upon the window pane recreated the sound of the gravel Michael had thrown long ago to attract Gretta's attention. Now they call Gabriel to a different rendezvous, the vision of the graveyard where Michael lies buried under the drifting snow (pp. 223-224).

While the linking of Michael to cold is consistent throughout these scenes, there is an interesting shift from rain to snow imagery. In Gretta's memories Michael is always evoked in rain, but in Ga briel's evocation he is usually associated with snow. The rain and water symbolism suggests that to Gretta, Michael brought an ex perience of life and love. The snow symbolism suggests that to Gabriel he now brings an experience of death.

The heat and fire imagery associated with Gabriel is partly ex plained by Gabriel's representation as the angel of fire. Metaphors of fire describe his feelings for Gretta, but paradoxically because they are applied both to his lust and his love. His present emotions '4giow angrily" and are termed "the dull fires of . . . lust." The pure, intense love of his youth is depicted as the soul's "tender fire" and likened to the "fire of stars" (pp. 213-214 and 219). In thus making a distinction between a love that is life-giving and good and one that is destructive and evil, Joyce is developing a life-death contrast. In using fire in such opposite meanings Joyce probably took Dante as model.22 In the Purgatorio, where the punishments image the sins, the lustful are purged in fire, but in the Paradiso fire as light is the image for God's love. In fact, Joyce's very phraseology, the "fire of stars," suggests Dante's pictures of the planetary heavens as rings of light and of the angelic choirs as circles of fire. In use of this imagery Gabriel seems rightly named for the angel of fire.

Ambiguities extend also to the roles Michael and Gabriel play as namesakes of great angels. St. Michael is the warrior angel of the Last Judgment, depicted in art holding scales and associated with the settling of accounts. One of his chief offices is to bring men's souls to judgment. And this is precisely the role Michael Furey plays in "The Dead." Though he exists only as a memory in Gretta's mind, he brings Gabriel to a judgment of himself. No ambiguity lies in the fact of this judgment; the ambiguity lies in the nature of the judgment. In this context a second office of the archangel Michael is pertinent: his duty to rescue the souls of the faithful at the hour of death. Since the verdict in Gabriel's case is not in the form of a statement, but a vision, it is not clear which of these functions

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FLORENCE L WALZL 29

Michael performs. Does he bring Gabriel, as his final verdict, a knowledge that he is one of the dead? Or does he bring him an illum ination that rescues him at the brink of spiritual death? Joyce leaves the role of Michael ambiguous.

In contrast to the stern role of the archangel Michael, Gabriel is a messenger angel associated with God's beneficence. In the Old Testament he is the angel sent to Daniel to interpret two great visions of salvation, one of them a Messianic prophecy. His words to Daniel, "Understand, O son of man, for in the time of the end the vision shall be fulfilled" (Daniel 8.17) may have relevance to "The Dead." In the New Testament he is the angel of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary and to Elizabeth. The vision of Zacharias has particular significance: to a man who was old and sterile and whose wife was barren, the angel Gabriel brought promise of new life. Does this name symbolism suggest birth and renewal for Gabriel? Or is it ironic in connection with this frustrated man? Joyce is not explicit. All these complex motifs reach culmination in Gabriel's vision.

This epiphany is the final stage of a development that has carried Gabriel from a selfish preoccupation with self to sympathy with Gretta, pity for his relatives, and love for all men. His illumination takes place when he realizes he is part of common humanity and shares its mutable state of being. At thi^ moment of enlightenment he loses even the sense of his own identity, and his soul approaches "that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead." As he watches the snow fall, he reflects that the "time had come for him to set out on his journey westward." Because of the earlier ambiguities, Joyce has made it possible for this strange statement to be either a life or a death suggestion. It is the keynote symbol of the vision, and its significance is all-important, since the meaning of the rest of the vision depends on the interpretation of this image. If it is read as a death symbol, all successive images take a like coloration. If it is read as a life symbol, the succeeding images all suggest rebirth. It signals the opening of one of the most remarkable ambiguities in literature, a conclusion that offers almost opposite meanings, each of which can be logically argued.

For the reader who has come to this conclusion by way of the fourteen preceding stories of disillusioned children, frustrated youths, sterile adults and paralyzed social groups in Dubliners, the cosmic vision of "The Dead" seems the last stage in a moribund process. The final fate of the Dubliners everyman is a death in life, and Gabriel Conroy's illumination is that he is dead. In this interpreta tion the vision is a final statement of the death themes of the book.

The snow that covers all Ireland images the deadly inertia of the nation. The lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried pictures the end of individual hope and love. The crooked crosses

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30 JAMES JOYCE QUARTERLY

on which the snow drifts represent the defective and spiritually dead Irish Church. The spears and barren thorns suggest the futility of Christ's sacrifice for a people so insensible. To the hero it is an ir revocable last judgment. Such an interpretation is a powerful and symbolically logical conclusion for Dubliners.

This is not the conclusion that the reader who knows only "The Dead" draws. Interpreting the journey westward as a start toward a new life of greater reality, he sees a succession of rebirth images. The snow, though it is general over Ireland, is quickly swallowed in the Shannon waves?its static iciness melting in the great waters of life. The melting snow is seen as subtly paralleling the change in the hero whose cold conceit has disappeared with his warming humani tarianism. The snow melting is thus a baptismal symbol, and as such offers renewed life not only to Gabriel, but also all the dead who lie here. The lonely churchyard where Michael Furey is buried serves only as a reminder that the grave has already yielded up its dead. For Michael lives vibrantly in the memory of a vibrant act. The recollections of Christ's passion in the spears and thorns are re minders that sacrifice of self is the condition of revival. The judg ment that Michael brings is a salvation, and Gabriel's swoon is a symbolic death from which he will rise revivified. Gabriel is rightly named: he is a figure of annunciation and new life.

Joyce thus resolved the problem in logic which arose from his changed viewpoints by composing a conclusion for k'The Dead" and Dubliners that employed a pattern of ambivalent symbols and a great final ambiguity.

University of Wisconsin?Milwaukee

1. Portions of this paper were given in a somewhat different form at the College and University Conference of the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, October 24, 1964, and published in the report of the conference, Wisconsin Studies in English, Number 2, under the title "Ambiguity in the Structural Symbols of Gabriel's Vision in Joyce's The Dead.' "

2. See Kenneth Buxke, "Three Definitions," Kenyou Review, XI11 (Spring 1951), 186 192; David Daiches, The Novel and the Modern World (Chicago, 1939), pp. 91-100; Rich ard Riimttnn, James Joyce (New York, 1959), pp. 252-263; Brewster Ghiselin, "The Unity of Joyce's 'Dubliners'," Accent (Spring 1956), 76-78, and (Summer 1956), 207-212; Julian B. Kaye, 'The Wings of Daedalus: Two Stories in 'Dubliners*/' Modern Fiction Studies, IV (Spring 1958), 37-41; Hugh Kenner, Dublin's Joyce (Bloomington, Ind., 1956), pp. 62-68; Richard Levin and Charles Shattuck, "First Flight to Ithaca: A New Reading of Joyce's 'Dubliners'," in James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism, ed. Sean Givens (New York, 1948), pp. 87-92; C. C. Loomis, Jr., "Structure and Sympathy in Joyce's 'The Dead'," PMLA, LXXV (March 1960), 149-151; Marvin Magalaner and Richard M. Kain, Joyce: The Man, The Work, The Reputation (New York, 1956), pp. 92-98; Virginia Moseley, " 'Two Sights for Ever a Picture' in Joyce's 'The Dead'," College English, XXVI (March 1965), 426-433; Frank O'Connor, "Joyce and Dissociated Metaphor," in The Mirror in the Roadway: A Study of the Modern Novel (New York, 1956), pp. 299-301; Brendan P. O Hehir, "Structural Symbol in Joyce's 'The Dead'," Twentieth Century Literature, III (April 1957), 3-13; Allen T?te, "Three Commentaries," Sewanee Review, LVIIi (Winter 1950), 10-15; and William York Tindall, The Literary Symbol (New York, 1955), pp. 224-228 and A Reader's Guide to James Joyce (New York, 1959), pp. 42-49.

3. Kenner states that "The Dead" is the final "definition of living death" toward which the "entire book is oriented" and Gabriel's "proper medium" is death (pp. 62 and 67); Ghiselin states that "Gabriel's enlargement and liberation in his final vision is not a restoration to life" (p. 210). See also the views of Kaye that "the epiphany of The Dead' is a revelation of death" (p. 41), and of O'Connor that the snow is "death's symbol" (p. 299).

4. Burke regards the snow as a "mythic image" of "transcendence" above the "world

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FLORENCE L. WALZL 31

of conditions,'' of "ideal sociality" (pp. 191-192); Daiches calls the snow vision a "symbol of Gabriel's new sense of identity with the world, of the breakdown of the circle of his egotism" (p. 99); T?te states the snow "reverses its meaning," becoming a "symbol of warmth" which represents the "hero's escape from his own ego into the larger world of humanity" (p. 15). See also the analyses of Loomis and O Hehir.

5. Ellmann, pp. 256-262. See also Magalaner and Kain, pp. 95-98; and Tindall, The Literary Symbol, pp. 224-228 and Guide, pp. 45-48.

6. From a letter to Grant Richards in Herbert Gorman, James Joyce (New York, 1939), p. 150.

7. See James R. Baker, "Ibsen, Joyce, and the Living-Dead: A Study of 'Dubliners'/' m A James Joyce Miscellany, Third Series, ed. Marvin Magalaner (Carbondale, 111., 1962), pp. 19-32; Ghiselin, pp. 75-88 and 196-213; William Powell Jones, James Joyce and the Common Reader (Norman, Okla., 1955), pp. 9-23; Kenner, pp. 53-68; Robert S. Ryf, A New Approach to Joyce: The Portrait of the Artist as a Guidebook (Berkeley, Cal., 1962), pp. 59-76; Tindall, Guide, pp. 3-8; and Florence L. Walzl, "Pattern of Paralysis in Joyce's DubUners," College English, XX (January 1961), 221-228.

8. From a letter to Grant Richards in Gorman, p. 150. 9. Ghiselin, pp. 77-79. 10. See Stanislaus Joyce, "James Joyce: A Memoir," trans. Felix Giovanelli, Hudson

Review, II (1949-1950), 502. 11. See Ellmann, pp. 252-263. 12. See Gorman, p. 167. 13. From a letter to Stanislaus Joyce in Ellmann, p. 239. 14. See Gerhard Friedrich, "The Perspective of Joyce's Dubliners," College English,

XXVI (March 1965), 421^26; and Ryf, p. 73. 15. James Joyce, Dubliners, Compass Edition (New York. 1958), p. 192. All subsequent

citations are from this edition. 16. EUmaim, pp. 260-261. 17. See the letter to Grant Richards in James Joyce, Letters, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York,

1957), p. 64, in which Joyce alludes to Dubliners as a "nicely polished looking-glass" in which the Irish people could get "one good look at themselves."

18. William Butler Yeats, Collected Plays (New York, 1953), p. 54. Adaline Glasheen noted this echo: see Ellmann, p. 258.

19. Ellmann, p. 259. 20. "Gabriel," and "Michael," The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911, VI, 330, and X, 275-277;

"Gabriel," and "Michael," The Jewish Encyclopedia, 1910, V, 540-543, and VIII, 535-538; and Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, trans. Henrietta Szold (Philadelphia, 1909), 7 vols. See also Gerhard Friedrich, "Bret Harte as a Source for James Joyce's 'The Dead'," PQ, XXXIII (October 1954), 442-444; and George Knox, "Michael Furey: Symbol Name in Joyce's "The Dead'," The Western Humanities Review, XIU (Spring 1959), 221 222. Ginzberg states that "the rivalry of these two angels (Michael and Gabriel) is met with in Jewish legends throughout the centuries" (V, 4); and notes that the identification of them with the elements differs in various Jewish authorities. "Michael is . . . said to consist of fire, the heavenly element; Gabriel of snow, the primordial substance of which the earth was made. According to others, Michael is of snow, and Gabriel of fire" (V, 70). Joyce used the traditions of angek>logy as they best suited his purpose in "The Dead." His identification of his angels with directions does not fit the usual tradition? which associated Michael with the east, Raphael with the west, Gabriel with the north and Uriel with the south.

21. Hie Jewish Encyclopedia, VIII, 538. 22. See Moseky on the flame imagery, pp. 431-433. This study points out numerous

Dante motives in "The Dead" and calls attention to the passage in which Dante stales that "Holy Church represents Gabriel/ and Michael with human faces/ and the other (Raphael) by whom Took was healed" since because of human limitations man can learn "only from sense impressions." Parodlso, IV, 37-48 (trans. H. R. Huse).

7 Eccles Street

Bloom's house remains abandoned and continues to decay. The roof and a portion of the back wall were condemned by The City of Dublin. These portions have been removed by the owners. Without the roof, the process of decay will be rapidly increased. At present there are no known plans for the future of 7 Eccles Street and as late as August of this year the owners were unavailable for comment.

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