Throughout “The Dead,” Gabriel Conroy undergoes one difficult social exchange after another. Even when he and his wife arrive at the party and he starts by chatting up Lily, she bites his head off for asking about her romantic life. Throughout the evening things continue: Gretta teases him about his love for galoshes; Miss Ivors chides him for what she perceives as a lack of interest in his native Ireland. Gabriel’s speech to the party guests goes well, but when it is time to go and he starts thinking romantically about his wife, Gretta, she tells him that she has been thinking of a song she heard at the party, first sung to her by a lover when they were both young (Joyce).
The work of art I chose as a connection with “The Dead” is Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks. This painting features four people in a diner late at night (Hopper). There is a solitary man in a suit and a hat, a worker behind the bar, and a couple – another man in a suit and hat and a woman with red hair and a red dress, the only bold spot of color in the whole painting. The distances among all of the characters show the isolation that people feel from one another, rendered ironic in one of the largest cities in the world. Even the facial expressions of the couple fail to show any sort of warm connection. This mirrors that central disconnect between Gabriel and Gretta, as well as the larger disconnect that separates all of us from one another, according to the ideas expressed in the story and the painting.
Works Cited
Hopper, Edward. Nighthawks. 2009. Web. 17 February 2016.
Joyce, James. “The Dead.” Creighton University. 2012. Web. 17 February 2016.
