The theme of women repeatedly deflating Gabriel’s self-image came up briefly at the end of last class and I think it’s quite relevant to some of the points Norris makes in “Dead Again.” Norris identifies this issue as being at least partially linguistic: Gabriel is a purveyor of palaver with a yearning for the lyrical, and he sometimes convinces himself that one is the other. His early encounter with Lily introduces this theme, and he smarts at her comment, possibly because he senses that he belongs among those indicted.<\/p>\n
Large sections of the story revolve around Gabriel and his relationship to his own words. He frets constantly about his speech and the speech itself is something of a centerpiece. Gabriel’s anxiety stems in part from uncertainty regarding the adequacy of his performance and the adequacy of his words; the words themselves are implicated in the performance. The performativity of both conversation and language itself is a source of rising tension in the story that culminates in Gretta’s story in the hotel.<\/p>\n
Margot writes: I tend to agree with Margot’s argument, but it leaves me feeling somewhat wary of Joyce’s ending, in a way similar to one Pecora discusses. To what extent can we trust the beautiful words Joyce uses to end the story? What is performative in “The Dead” and what is not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The theme of women repeatedly deflating Gabriel’s self-image came up briefly at the end of last class and I think it’s quite relevant to some of the points Norris makes in “Dead Again.” Norris identifies this issue as being at least partially linguistic: Gabriel is a purveyor of palaver with a yearning for the lyrical, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/52"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eriksimpson.sites.grinnell.edu\/Ulysses16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n“What terrifies Gabriel in Gretta’s story is his need to confront the possibility of a genuinely lyrical existence, a world of feeling and caring never elevated to self-consciousness or dressed in beautiful language designed to rebound to the greater glory of its producer. What Gabriel hears in Gretta’s story are beautiful words that are\u00a0not<\/em> palaver.” (p370)<\/p>\n