"The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Politics and the English Language' - Part II
- "The National Past" in Joyce's 'The Dead' and Orwell's '1984' + his essay 'Politics and the English Language'
- Part II
- Part III
- Part IV
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In the light of Gabriel's insight into this complex matter the question to rise for him is whether he will be prepared in the future to accept this kind of ‘humiliation’, of ‘defeat’ in as far as he has had (and will have) a ‘dead rival’ competing with him for the ‘possession’ of her not as a mere piece of property but her ‘love’ as a token of her favor for him/them. Will Gabriel be able to re-kindle a ‘fire’, a ‘light’ in the dawn of a new day (which is about to begin in the story) to mend the broken relationship with his wife? Will he be able to foster new bonds in a new light, a light which accepts a person’s past, a past tied to history, religion, tradition each of us automatically inherited and has got to be conscious of?
The ‘light’ in the hotel room lit by a ‘candle’ can be extended into a broader line of similar images, all of which are intertwined with each other: Gabriel’s burning desire, which is like a ‘fire’, his enchantment (by his wife deep in his soul, the realm of his emotions uncontrolled by reason), leading to his ‘enlightenment’ (with emphasis on the mind), his ‘epiphany’ (sudden becoming aware of something he hadn’t recognized up to that point of time).
Parallel to this play on ‘dark’ and ‘light’ runs the emphasis on our cultural inheritance which we are meant to cherish. Joyce’s lesson evidently is that if we don’t pay heed to all that has formed/made us, we are doomed to a premature ‘death’ as becomes obvious in the relations Gabriel has/had to a) his wife, b) Lily, c) Miss Ivor.
As to Gabriel’s wife, she has a natural (down to earth, nature-related) sensitivity which Gabriel himself hasn’t become aware of in all those years. What links her to Miss Ivor is also a sense of homeliness, a sense of feeling drawn to one’s origins, which in the case of Miss Ivor takes the shape or expression of ‘patriotism’, a longing, a quest, a search for one’s identity on the basis of common experience, a language (in that case ‘Gaelic Irish’), history, folklore, literature, art, all of which make up the ingredients of a tradition and cultural ‘treasure’ shared by the people of one and the same ‘nation’. It is against this foil of abstract values we have to see Miss Ivor’s ‘westbound’ yearning (for a holiday in the west of Ireland, recurrently coming up in her at certain intervals), which transferred to Gretta assumes the evocation of Galway and the person of Michael Furey. I think the moral lesson Joyce wants to teach us in those examples and cross-cultural
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references to art, music and literature in a universal respect (cf. the Italian opera “Lucrezia Borgia”; the repeated quoting of “Caruso”, an outstanding, famous tenor of his time) is that if we don’t stick to the ‘spiritual’ values we inherited from the past (i.e. our ancestors and their achievements) we will lose touch with life, we will become ‘dead’. We will shrink to mechanically functioning beings, who might be categorized as (the) ‘living dead’ - if I may use an oxymoron to express this idea.
The very fact that Gabriel has been dead for quite a long time becomes evident in the “galoshes” he wants Gretta to wear. Whereas Gretta is not afraid of the snow and the little bit of cold naturally connected with it, Gabriel is scared of falling victim to it. He shies back from a real touch with life. He uses galoshes not just because they are fashionable so as to show off with a good-looking wife at such a Christmas dinner and dance party, but to make sure against the uncertainties of life. He thinks in terms of a life insurance as if there was such a thing against the imponderable in life. Unlike young Michael Furey, who exposed himself to rain (and bad weather conditions in general), who risked his life out of true love for Gretta, Gabriel is not prepared to take any risks so as not to endanger himself.
Undeniably this motif of ‘going west’ means ‘going home’. West is where the sun sets. West is where Ireland is - for Miss Ivor, and for Gretta west is where the dead are buried. The last character in this ‘triangle’ we have to cast some light upon within this perspective is Lily. Even she was underrated, treated ‘patronizingly’ and thus condescendingly by Gabriel. On the one hand he sees her beauty and wants to make her compliments, but somehow he is very awkward in his demeanor towards her. He doesn’t perceive a ‘flower’ in her, which her very name suggests, maybe a flower to blossom and bloom at Easter, the time of Christ’s resurrection, the seasonal re-birth of nature and in unison with this Gabriel’s own ‘coming back to life’. In what Lily retorts him with, Gabriel does not recognize a hint, clue, allusion as to where he as a ‘man’ might be misguided (> an egotist): “The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” (p.129)
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Yet there is still some hope for Gabriel to win back his wife and to unite with her in true love. This is superbly expressed in the final paragraph concluding the story. Just as the snow is ‘falling faintly’, tapping on the window pane, just as landscape outside and men inside the hotel room are put under a ‘warm cover’, a blanket so to speak, the veil of snow does not separate Gabriel from his wife entirely. One might just as well see the snow as a means of bringing people together again. The snow will melt away, spring time will come, and ‘lilies’ will arise. This ‘cover-scene’ towards an early morning that will take the night away is perhaps the moment when things begin to ‘dawn’ upon Gabriel (this stubborn archangel), when a ‘revelation’ takes place, an ‘apocalypse’ through an epiphany in him.
II) B) Relating those findings to Joyce's position as a 'national writer' and drawing
first conclusions
There is undeniably a tinge of a possible healing process left in The Dead. This 'process' concerns Gabriel. He has to re-think his attitude to his wife. He must become aware of the specific sensitivity inherent to her person. And like any man she too is made up of a) her hereditary constitution (physically, mentally, psychically), b) the past, which in her case includes an enduring experience from Galway.
Galway itself stands for 'home', for 'Ireland', this yearning for her (and Miss Ivor's) identity. So I think we don't overrate and thus misinterpret the significance the locality of Galway plays in this short story. The underlying meaning and message driven home in this to the sensitive reader is plainly that there is no way round or past the historical and cultural heritage implanted in the soul of each Irish-born citizen in the sense of obliterating, denying, ignoring, neglecting or casting aside of it.
The same goes for Gabriel, in whom we can recognize Joyce himself. Gabriel wants to go to the Continent for a holiday. The Continent obviously stands for this (escaping, running) "away" from a Roman Catholic impregnated background/Irishness. The movement to the Continent reveals a desire for a liberation of the mind, an act towards
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progressivism, an opening and widening of the mind. In a way it means rejecting, renouncing a 'religion' (here the 'Church') as a one-sided, mind-restricting (= mind-narrowing) "ideology". Any "ideology" - simply by its definition and 'self-understanding - doesn't tolerate any other ideology. It automatically excludes and fights any counter-attitudes to life and human existence as such. In the light of this recognition we might be justified to see a cosmopolitan (mind) in Gabriel. Yet, conversely and relentlessly, it is this cosmopolitan viewpoint/perspective that will oblige him to give in to his wife's natural wishes from time to time and travel with her to Galway for her sake. In other words, he will have to find a compromise and make both ends meet in order to save his marriage and not remain the self-styled 'hero' of a self-imposed 'tragedy'. He will have to blend his own 'Irishness' - which he despises as 'provinciality', a hindrance to the unfolding of his mental capacity, a disgrace in a way, which cannot be wiped out and with which he has got to put up - with his bird-like urge for more freedom - a territory of the mind he seems to find on the Continent enriched with multicultural elements motivating and inspiring him into a new, promising beginning as an artist - distant from the oppressing world of Ireland.[1]
Whereas Orwell is definitely a writer with a purely political purpose, in Joyce there is a far deeper going artistic feature dominating his 'national' concern and (indirectly active) involvement for an 'independent', sovereign Ireland. His 'nationality' has been shaped and tinted by (the) residues if not 'relicts' (in his eyes!) from a Church inspired and infiltrated history.