In the year 1882 in Dublin a famous writer with the name James Joyce was born and in the year 1941 in Zurich, Switzerland, James Joyce died at the age of 59. Joyce began his career by writing short stories that impacted, with extraordinary clarity, aspects of Dublin life. These stories were published as part of Dubliners in 1914. Fifteen of his stories filled the pages of Dubliners: the stories are: The Sisters, An Encounter, Araby, Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, The boarding house, A little cloud, Counterparts, Clay, A painful case, Ivy day in the Committee room, A mother, Grace and The Dead. He subsequently wrote the following novels: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939). The final Dubliners story, "The Dead", was not part of the original draft of the book but was added later. During a holiday event, attended by guests whose portraits Joyce draws with precision and economy, a series of shocking events frees the protagonist, Gabriel, from his possessiveness and selfishness. The vision he ultimately reaches is the atmosphere of supreme neutrality. Many themes and concepts are present in "The Dead" such as male dominance, power class, nationalism, love, nostalgia, desperation, decay and epiphany. In "The Dead," Gabriel Conroy's sober demeanor and reputation among his aunts as the nephew who takes care of everything mark him as a domineering and cautious man, but two encounters with women at the party test his confidence . First, Gabriel awkwardly provokes a defensive statement from the overworked Lily when he asks her about her love life. Instead of apologizing or explaining what he meant, Gabriel quickly ends the conversation by giving......middle of paper......t, and someone who leaves the world like Michael Furey, with great passion in fact lives more fully than people like him. We can see that without these other characters the protagonist would not exist. By the end of “The Dead” Gabriel Conroy has become a symbol of the isolation of modern man. Bibliography Hobbies, Blake. "Alienation in James Joyce's Dubliners." Alienation. New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, 2009. 61-69. Print Winston, Greg C. “Militarism and 'The Dead'.” A New and Complex Sensation: Essays on Joyce's Dubliners. Dublin: Lilliput, 2004. 122-32. Print. Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. Introduction to literature, criticism and theory. 3rd ed. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2004. The Dead Greenblatt, Stephen and MH Abrams, eds. Norton Anthology of English Literature. vol. 2. 8th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. pp. 2