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?