Prototypical Man of T.S. Eliot\'s

¶ … Prototypical Man of T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland": Gabriel Conroy in James Joyce's "The Dead"

James Joyce's short stories are full of meaning on many levels; history, religion, and contemporary literature all found their way into his stories in both literal and symbolic ways. Even when Joyce did not consciously incorporate these elements into either his text or his subtext in a conscious manner, the literary atmosphere in which Joyce was writing necessarily found a way to influence his plots, intents, meanings, and even -- perhaps especially -- his characters. Joyce, that is, is as much a product of his times as his works have come to typify the literature of his era. One instance of this complex relationship between disparate literary works from the same period in the twentieth century is Joyce's short story "The Dead," wherein the character of Gabriel's uncertainty regarding his own identity and others' perception of him is reminiscent of the denizens of Eliot's "wasteland."

T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" is a very dense poem, and all but impossible to understand on a literal level. It's meaning becomes somewhat clearer through the poem's tone and symbolism, however, in a way that clearly relates to Joyce's "The Dead." At one point, the speaker in "The Wasteland" recalls, "I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing" (line 42). The theme of death is hugely prevalent in "The Wasteland," especially in the first section. The concept of death is not always directly related to human mortality in the poem, but rather often seems to denote a feeling or even a reality of non-being; there is a lack of substantiality to the identities of both the speaker and many of the other people the speaker meets or observes, and to many of the too-human trappings of the world.

This is the case with Gabriel in "The Dead" as well. Throughout much of the action of the story, Gabriel appears at a loss as to who he is, which is directly related to how he is perceived. The first time in the story this is noticed is to the beginning, when he gives a coin to Lily out of an unspecified yet apparently selfless motive. Gabriel wants to share himself with others, but is unable to do s in a manner he feels befits him because he is unsure of himself, and unsure of how others react to him. This becomes painfully clear at the end of the story, when Gabriel realizes that the nature of love is related to the desire for death in love's absence: "His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world" (Joyce). At the end of the story, Gabriel experiences a bittersweet salvation of sorts in his sudden understanding of humanity, but is still left alone, caught between life and death.