Sunday, September 11, 2011
The Dead
Having an Irish lineage, I was excited to read this story. Unfortunately, none of it took place outside of Dublin. All my family are from a town in the Northwestern part of Ireland called Donegal. It was fun to read all of the cultural aspects in this story. However, I had anticipated a sort of ghost story with the tittle being, The Dead. I was disappointed when I found out that, The Dead was a person that we never get to meet in the actual story. During the part of the story where Gabriel was looking up the stairs at Gretta and the song The Lass of Aughrim was being played by Mr. D'Arcy, I thought for sure it was a ghost playing the song, based on the reaction that we get from Gretta. So far, this story seems to be the only one that I really don't get. I don't see a clear theme. The only thing that I can think of is that you should love those that you have an be thankful that you have them and that they love you back. I think Gabriel, at the end of the story, realizes that he has not devoted himself to Gretta. He also realizes that she feels like she has never had a love like Michael Furey, the boy who dies when she is 18. Gabriel realizes that he has never loved someone so much that he would be willing to die to see them one last time, like Michael Furey. This story really switched gears at the end and went from joyful to downright depressing.
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I thought the same thing about the title. I figured that there would be a ghost involved or some sort of storyline about the living dead. I also agree about when Mr. D'Arcy was playing the piano. Gretta definitely acted as if there was some supernatural occurrence happening. At one point in the story, when Gabriel and Gretta check-in to the hotel, I thought that Gretta might be a vampire. She tells the porter to take away the candle because they had enough light from the street. I thought this was weird and automatically assumed that she was a vampire. I think I was still waiting for something to happened that I really related back to the title.
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