A Deconstructive Reading Of "the Dead"

James Joyce is one of the greatest Irish novelists in the twentieth century, as well as an outstanding representative of the modernist novels of the Western world. His writing exercises great influences on the development of the western literature. Sometimes he is compared with Dickens as two writers after Shakespeare."The Dead", which has been regarded as one of the best stories in English-speaking countries, is the synthesis and the climax of James Joyce's Dubliners. Seeing from the narrative clue, we find that Joyce describes the protagonist Gabriel's three frustrations from three women on several occasions at the party or after the party. Thus Gabriel gradually knows himself and finally experiences his "epiphany". But owing to many indefinite factors existing in the text, it is difficult for us to judge what Gabriel's future is really like at the end of the story. In fact, the uncertain meaning of the text is a great challenge to the traditional reading. This shows there exists ambiguity or paradox in "The Dead".Deconstructive criticism, which flourished during the 1960s and 1970s, is a prevailing literary critical method. It intends to dismantle the certain and unique meaning in text and offers a free approach to literary works. The thesis is intended to make analysis on "The Dead" under the guidance of deconstructive approach, especially the deconstructive idea of Jacque Derrida--differance. "différance", as a difference that produces difference, is a very important concept in Derrida's deconstructive theory. Through differance, Derrida subverted the "logocentrism" and "phonocentrism" of the western metaphysical thinking and established the concept of differance and made it clear that any effort to trace the ultimate meaning of the universe is in vain.This thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter 1 gives a general information about James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners; a brief introduction to "The Dead" and its themes, of which the most two controversial themes—death and rebirth are chosen as the topic of the thesis; then followed by some critical ideas on "The Dead".Chapter 2 gives a theoretical introduction to Derrida's deconstruction, accompanied by the analytic methods and the intention of the deconstructive criticism, with the aim to offer a theoretical background for the interpretation. Then Chapter 3 focuses on the analysis about the meanings of "the Dead" and "the west" through Derrida's "différance" and "supplement" theory, and shows that ambiguity and uncertainty of the language leads to the losing of the ultimate meaning, (as a presence), like the seeds in the hand thrown in different directions. The certain meaning of the sign is differed constantly. Therefore it has no centre at all. Then according to the sentence "The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward." (Joyce, 1993:2035)—a key sentence to understand the theme of the story, the thesis discusses the most two controversial themes—death and rebirth, and points out that the two contradictory themes can co-exist in the same story just because there are many contradictory factors existing in the text. It is these contradictory factors which lead to the uncertain meaning of the text, namely, the losing of "transcendental signified". The text dismantles itself. At the same time, the uncertain theme of the text also demonstrates the subversion to the traditional reading.The conclusion part sums up the analysis in the previous chapters and draws a conclusion that the ambiguity and ambivalence of language lead to the uncertain theme of the text, that is to say, the ultimate meaning of the text has no longer existed. At the same time, the openness of the theme of the text offers much more room for the reader to interpret it. Because of this, it has been attracting more and more readers' attentions at present.