The Dead :: essays research papers

The DeadWhen Gabriel Conroy delivers his wordy yet incredibly moving speech to the cackle of Dubliners gathered together for the Holidays, he worries, possibly even fears, death. He talks of the future, making it sound cold and inhospitable. He lays compliments on his aunts one later the other about their perennial youth (pg.166) and their kid ways. Gabriel addresses both the future and the present using a compare and contrast method, making one come out comforting and homey, the other dark and unknown. This comparison adds the aspect of death to Gabriels speech because of impermanence of his Aunt Julia and Aunt Kate the impermanence of good old Irish hospitality, warmth and love.The reader is also a sense of Gabriels desperate fear of death when he speaks of his Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia. He seems defiant of the particular that they are both old and wont be around to throw parties like these much longer. Gabriel constantly harps on their energy and youthfulness. At first, he so unds simply like a polite young man fiercely complimenting his elder family members as many people do. But as his speech continues and he begins to discuss the attributes of each aunt and how they effect everyone else in the room, Gabriel begins to sound more and more like he is trying to grab and hold on to something only intangible. And I think that thing is youth. He is trying to preserve his aunts, and every wonderful thing that they represent, forever. He sees that once they perish, there will be no one to throw these parties anymore, no one to extend a warm welcome to anyone who enters their home. In the future, without Gabriels aunts, everything they know today will gone totally because of death. Gabriel starts out his speech with talk of the ideas, both political and scientific, that are beginning to sprout out of young peoples minds as they speak. He fears that these young, enlightened people will not look back on parties like they are holding at this moment and recognize s the qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour (pg. 165) that run uncontrolled through each and every room. He seems to realize the importance of these qualities and he fears that when his generation dies out, so will the mannerisms of the Old Irish ways, the comfort these ways shoot down him, and mostly, life as he knows it.