The Dead (James Joyce)

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Die Toten ( The Dead ) is the last story or novella in James Joyce 's collection of stories, which was first published in 1914 under the title Dubliner . It is considered one of Joyce's most important texts, in which the author also portrayed his own family members and himself.

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The junior sisters Miss Kate and Miss Julia Morkan hold a traditional festive dinner every year around Christmas, to which they invite family members and friends of the family, all of whom belong to the upper middle class in Dublin . Their niece Mary Jane, who gives music lessons, helps them with this. Guests include Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta, the mostly drunk Freddy Malins, the Irish nationalist Miss Ivors, a pianist who plays to dance, and the tenor at the local opera house, Mr. D'Arcy, and a number of others People.

The conversations over dinner and afterwards revolve around local issues and cultural, religious and political issues. Gabriel gives a solemn speech.

At the end of the evening, when a number of guests have already left and the rest are preparing to leave, the tenor is singing a song for some of the guests in the dining room. Gretta, already in the hallway, is obviously very much affected by this, and on the drive to the hotel, where she and Gabriel spend the night, because the way back would be too late so late, she still seems to be thinking about the song. Since she starts to cry and doesn't seem to notice him anymore, Gabriel asks her why.

Gretta tells him that a childhood sweetheart, Michael Furey, once sang this song to her. Finally, when she was moving from Galway to Dublin, he appeared seriously ill one winter night to bid her farewell. Knowing that he was consumptive , she sent him home. Shortly afterwards he died and Gretta blamed herself for his death.

The way Gretta tells him this story gives Gabriel an inkling that she only ever loved this boy who died at the age of seventeen, that he himself was only a substitute and that the deceased was always closer to Gretta than himself.

While Gretta falls asleep, Gabriel thinks, now moved to tears himself, about this matter and he realizes for the first time how much he loves Gretta. The novella ends with the famous sentence: "Slowly his soul disappeared while he heard the snow falling silently through space, and silently it fell, like the descent of their last hour, on all living and dead."

Subject

The story makes it clear how much all the people involved are entangled in conventions and prejudices , but how much they sometimes suffer from them and try to escape the narrowness of their existence. The apparent cheerfulness of the festival serves as a backdrop for human encounters, before which loneliness , fears, self-doubt and longings of the individual come to light and which illustrates the fragility of human relationships. This portrayal culminates in Gabriel's realization that his wife never really loved him.

The story of the young deceased lover is based on a true story in Joyce's life: his wife Nora Barnacle had two lovers in her youth who died young before she met Joyce. Among them was the 16-year-old teacher Michael Feeney, who died of typhus and pneumonia.

Adaptations

The film adaptation of the novella under the same title was the last directorial work by John Huston in 1987 . The translation for the German synchronization of the film was done by Harry Rowohlt . There is also a Broadway musical called James Joyce's The Dead .

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literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Ellmann, James Joyce Biographie , Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 3085, Frankfurt am Main, 1999, ISBN 3-518-39585-8