I found Pecora’s criticism on Joyce’s The Dead to be one of the most enlightening. It was not only interesting and unusual because of the re-visitation of his old work, but also because he left his conclusion on an ambiguous note. This is rare in criticism, but thought it was particularly appropriate for such an indefinite ending. Pecora muses,

“There is, I now recognize, something deeply human and moving about Gretta and her sorrow, and about her sense of a lost chance for passion in an otherwise dreary existence. But I cannot shake the feeling that, throughout Dubliners, it is precisely this preoccupation with the loss of missed passions of the past that is meant to be seen as paralyzing, as usurping the chance for passion in the present” (356).

When we read and later discussed this ending of Dubliners that Pecora debates here, I really only understood and came away with one side of the ending: sympathy for the lost and misaligned passions of Gretta and Gabriel. But Pecora’s point about the characters’ preoccupations concerning missed passion of the past rings quite true as well. This ending is much too complex to read as only having one meaning, and I now believe that Pecora is right that the story both mourns the missed loves of Gretta and Gabriel, but takes somewhat of a cynical tone toward the lovers and their choice to remain stagnantly fixed on lost passions instead of seizing happiness in the present.