Thesis: James Joyce portrays Gabriel Conroy as a man imprisoned by his rational mind and the need to control his world, and can experience love only by having his defenses eroded, after which he experiences compassion for all people living and dead.
I. Gabriel's epiphany comes only after his life's fragments and the differences between himself and others dissolve and unite.
2. The scenes at the party are designed to break down Gabriel's rational control of his world and his mind, step by step.
3. Gabriel is seen by others as competent and in control, but he is a slave to this well-controlled facade.
4. The story of the horse emphasizes Gabriel's lack of sympathy.
5. Gabriel's loss of his final defense begins when he sees his wife moved so deeply by a song. This sight enlivens his lust, but when his lust is thwarted, he learns her longing is aimed at a boy, dead now, who loved her unto death.
6. Jealous at first, Gabriel yields to his wife's overwhelming emotional experience to such an extent that he feels, for perhaps the first time in his life, what another person feels.
7. This surrender, preceded by the party's assault on his defenses, is precisely what Gabriel has needed in order to feel sympathy and compassion for others, all others, living and dead.
8. Ironically, the very shame and foolishness Gabriel has feared with such dread all his adult life are precisely what serve as the means of his emotional and spiritual liberation.
James Joyce's "The Dead" is the story of Gabriel Conroy, an intelligent, rational, accomplished man whose primary concern is the terror of being a fool. That fear is precisely what keep Gabriel in a state of self-conscious misery and what has made his life loveless and without compassion. What happens in the story is that for the first time he will be able to see himself, and life, and death, in a new perspective, marked not by the fear of appearing foolish, not by the need to b...