Vulnerability Narrative And Multiple Themes Of Joyce’s The Dead

Joyce is a master of stream of consciousness novels in Ireland in twentiethCentury. All of his works are classics though the number of his novels is small. TheDead is the finale story of Dubliners. Before The dead, Joyce’s creations were allpoetry and short stories, after that he step on the road of creating long stories. So TheDead is an important work which can be seen as a twist in Joyce’s creating career. Inthis paper, The Dead is my research object. The points are narrative technique andtheme of this novel——vulnerability narrative and multiple themes.The thesis is divided into three chapters.The first chapter explores the background of The Dead. Joyce took not a periodof time but the whole history of Irish as his novel’s background, and he always put hisown experiences into his creations. Due to this, for exploring the technique andthemes of this novel deeply, this chapter analyses the developments of Irish and thelife experiences of Joyce. This chapter is divided into three sections. Thefirst section is a brief discussion on the history of Ireland, focus on religion andpolitics. In the second section, I induce the characteristics of the religion and politicsfrom three aspects——looseness、conservatism and dependence. The third sectionis Joyce’s life experiences when he created The Dead.I interpret vulnerability narrative in the second chapter. This chapter consists offour sections. The first section is the study of Joyce’s narrative techniques. I point out the vulnerability narrative has always been ignored. In the second section, define thevulnerability narrative and discuss the unique of Joyce’s vulnerability narrative. In thethird section, I research the intention of Joyce that made him set so manyvulnerabilities. In the forth section, I put forward symptomatic reading which is thebest way to read The Dead form three angles——be an active reader、 put thefragments which carry meaning in order、have a comprehensive understanding of thehistory of Irish and the personal life of Joyce.The third chapter elaborates the multiple themes of this story. Rely on excavatethe loopholes and the way of symptomatic reading, I research the themes one by one.The first theme is “contradiction of spirit”. My object of concern is the younggeneration in the story. I clarify that the paralysis of the Irish in the emotional,political, religious and other areas are all begin with the contradiction of spirit. Thesecond theme is “paralysis of spirit”. I focus on the middle——aged generation andpoint out that after suffering every contradictions, the Irish not only fail to find theroad of saving themselves, but also become paralyzed. The third theme is “death ofspirit”. The old——generation become my primary object. The forth theme is“resurrection of spirit”. I focus only on two figures in this part——Gabriel and Furey.Through the perspective of them, I sum up the highest theme of this story——whatJoyce wanted to do with literature creation is to wake up the Irish.Finally, I make an overall evaluation of The Dead. This novel is regarded as oneof the most classic works.