In our previous class, we briefly discussed the themes of reality and fantasy. It occurred to me after reading Norris and Pecora’s article “Dead Again” that Joyce brings up epiphany as a form of irony.
“…when I came to the story’s penultimate paragraph, which follow’s Gabriel’s realization that his love for Gretta was trivial by comparison to the love of the heroic Michael Furey and which dramatizes the sudden appearance within Gabriel of a new self-awareness and acceptance of others earned through humiliation, my argument was that the attentive reader could not read the line ‘Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes’ without feeling that it rang false, or…that Joyce was being thoroughly ironic about Gabriel’s presumed emotional awakening.” (346)
This passage reminded me of our discussion of Araby in class. Like Gabriel, at the very end, the narrator realizes his love for Mangan’s sister will never be reciprocated. Joyce portrays this epiphany as a form of irony, in that there is a clash of what is real and what is not real for the narrator. The dream-like state he finds himself in is ultimately crushed once he steps into the world of reality (in the form of the bazaar) as he comes to terms with being rejected.
It would seem that when characters are thrust forth into the “real world” there aren’t very many positive outcomes. Both the narrator in “Araby” and Gabriel find themselves in the midst of rejection by both of their love interests (though neither are said out loud). Joyce seems to be showing how a fantasy world is much more ideal than a harsh reality where things aren’t catered to how we would want them to be and we must live knowing that perfection does not exist.
In his revised analysis of “The Dead,” Pecora presents a much more personal viewpoint, one that, as he highlights towards the end of the piece, provides a potential answer for Joyce’s rather emotional ending to a story that up until that point, focused more on details of the dinner party than the characters’ deep thoughts or feelings.
Pecora comments, “There is, I now recognize, something deeply human and moving about Gretta and her sorry, and about her sense of a lost chance for passion in an otherwise dreary existence. I cannot shake the feeling that, throughout “Dubliners,” it is precisely this preoccupation with the lost of missed passions in the present” (356).
While Pecora focuses here on Gretta’s lost love, he spends a fair amount of time in the article questioning the validity of Gabriel’s “generous” tears. But in reality, Gabriel’s life is equally mundane, as are the lives of many of the other characters at the party, but we aren’t given as clear of a sense for “missed passions,” like with Gretta. Is Pecora rightfully critical of Gabriel’s response to his wife’s emotional confession, or is there something potentially missing from Gabriel’s story that is worth looking into?