The Barren Lives of the Dead"One day he caught a fish, a beautiful fish, big and fat, and the man in the hotel boiled it for their dinner" (p.191 ). Mrs. Malins did not know that those words from her weak old lips so poignantly described the insensitivity of the characters in James Joyce's The Dead to their barren lives. The people portrayed in this tale represented a wealthy Irish class of the early 20th century, gathered at the home of the Morkan sisters for an annual tradition of feasting and dancing. Although all the characters had, at some point, the potential for a wonderful life, the sad memories of the past and the desperation that overran Ireland had ultimately reduced all true senses and desires into a dull stew, destined to rot. Of particular interest is Gabriel Conroy, on whom Joyce singularly bestowed the gift of introspection, although this did not save him from becoming yet another living dead man. Gabriel, a respectable middle-aged professor and writer, longed for an escape, but he didn't. look for one. It was this passivity and resistance to change, like the "beeswax under the heavy chandelier" (p.186), that eventually solidified into the wall he did not have the courage to oppose. He felt like "a beggar to his aunts" (p. 220), the congregation's stewardesses, a victim of his own inability to "feel and show the excitement of fast and safe flight" (p. 193). In contrast, Miss Molly Ivors, professor of politics and Gabriel's academic peer, possessed this ability to escape obligations, when she left the meeting before dinner was served, "quite capable of taking care of [herself]" ( p. 195). In this respect, Miss Ivors differed from the rest of the character... middle of the paper... He had been surrounded all his life by a "ghostly light" (p.216) of sad memories and death, emanating from the heart of the people with whom he had had the closest contact, which ended up suffocating his own identity "in an impalpable gray world" (p. 223). The whole country of Ireland was covered with the "silver and dark" snowflakes of death (p.223), and the Mr. Brownes of the world, who remembered great singers now gone and hid their true senses under faces of false gallantry , they were everywhere. All the characters in The Dead helped form a viscous web that made Gabriel's escape virtually impossible, as "one by one they were all becoming shadows" (p.222) of "the region where the vast hosts of the dead dwell" ( p.223). They were all fish in a frozen pond, playing their parts and waiting for the day they would be caught and boiled for dinner..