glimpse of a more exciting life, but his only response is in his lonely
imagination, and he does nothing about it.z The genius of the story is not so much that it’s plotless as that it suggests
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girl. That disappointment is the point of the story: The real question is
not whether Ryabovitch gets the girl, but whether he can rise above his
own timid nature; that is a much more profound and unsettling question.
z Even though nothing “happens” in “The Kiss” in the traditional sense,
something profound changes over the course of the story—not in the
character or the situation but in the reader.
Joyce’s “The Dead”
z ³7KH'HDG ́LVWKH¿QDOVWRU\LQ-DPHV-R\FH¶VRQO\YROXPHRIVKRUW
¿FWLRQ'XEOLQHUV. Instead of a conventional climax or resolution,
the stories in this book rely on what Joyce called an HSLSKDQ. In
religious terms, the word HSLSKDQ\ means a deep spiritual insight or
realization brought about by divine intervention; Joyce used it to refer
to an individual experiencing a moment of profound, sometimes life-
changing, self-understanding.
z “The Dead” is the longest story in 'XEOLQHUV, and like “The Kiss,” it
reads conventionally; it’s a chronological account of a party in Dublin
in January 1904. Most of the story is told from the point of view of
a successful middle-aged man named Gabriel Conroy. Near the end of
the party, Gabriel witnesses his wife, Gretta, listening raptly to a singer
performing an old Irish folksong.
o In the cab on the way to the hotel room they’ve booked for
the night, Gabriel experiences a powerful lust for his wife,
but when they’re alone in the room, he realizes that Gretta is
upset. She tells him that hearing the folksong at the party has
reminded her of a boy named Michael Furey who loved her
when she was a young woman. Furey used to sing the same