I forgot to blog about how someone insulted my soul while in Oxford (besides the 2 hours of listening to my friend talk about the apocalypse- actually this related because Joyce wrote a very chilling depiction of Hell in Portrait, anyways). This boy who's reading (ie majoring in) English there told me that THE DEAD is OVERRATED. What. He also said he doesn't see how it basically depicts Joyce's transition into modernism. WHAT. It does. No, it honestly does. The story starts out like most of the stories in
Dubliners and then transcends into this amazing finale. The last few pages of "The Dead" is honestly the best ending to a story that I can think of. I've never read a short story that can surpass its power. But then again Joyce is my home boy.
And here for your enjoyment is the last paragraph of "The Dead." However, the entire story should be read to get its full effect:
A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, on the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
