Lecture 12: Structuring a Narrative without a Plot
song to her, and he probably died because he stood in the rain,
waiting outside her window.o Gabriel realizes that to make love to his wife at this moment
would be akin to an assault; thus, after she falls asleep, he
simply lies awake in the dark next to her. Gabriel’s epiphany
is his realization that Gretta has never loved him as much she
loved Furey, and he further realizes that he has never loved
her, or anyone else, the way Furey loved Gretta. But instead of
feeling rage or disappointment, Gabriel experiences a moment
of expansive generosity for his wife, for himself, for Furey, and
in Joyce’s famous phrase, for all the living and the dead.z You might think that Joyce could have evoked Gabriel’s epiphany in a
shorter story, one that focused only on the aftermath of the party, but
that simply wouldn’t have worked.
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the party, are structurally essential to Joyce’s purpose. Not
only does he include details about Gabriel that pay off only at
the end, but he shows us how a long-married couple present
themselves to their friends and acquaintances in a public
setting. This makes their moment of unexpected intimacy at the
end even more poignant and piercing.o We need to see, at length and in detail, the life that Gabriel
thought he was living in order to understand his shock when he
realizes that nothing he thought about his life was true.z $W¿UVWJODQFHWKHVWUXFWXUHRI³7KH'HDG ́LVVLPLODUWRWKDWRI³7KH
Kiss.” Both are chronological, both are centered on a party, and
both are essentially a series of evocative scenes that do not make up
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different from that of the “The Kiss” because Gabriel comes to a new
understanding of himself and Ryabovitch does not.