Binary oppositions are pairings of objects or concepts, which are seemingly mutually exclusive. In Western thought, one of the pair is privileged over the other; Jacques Derrida calls this privileging “logocentrism” (Of Grammatology), which was originally used to refer to the privilege of speech over writing. Jonathan Culler, in “Semiotics and Deconstruction,” offers a helpful definition for what it means to deconstruct logocentrism: “To deconstruct logocentrism is to show that what was taken to be the truth of the world or the ground of an enquiry is in fact a construct that has been imposed and which is contradicted by certain results of the enquiry it founds” (138). Deconstruction is a function of the text: something the text does to itself. In deconstructing binary oppositions, the opposition is not reversed. Norman Melchertt, in The Great Conversation, using the example of speech over writing, explains:
The claim is rather that the characteristics of what was held to be secondary and derivative are already, and necessarily, found in what was thought to be basic and primary. It is not, then, that the speech/writing dichotomy is simply overturned, so that it becomes writing/speech, with writing now in the primary spot, but that a deeper sense of “writing” is discovered that underwrites both terms. (707-708)
It is not that the texts points to inferiority, meaninglessness, or death as more important than their classical primaries. Rather, it points to that which has been assumed to be inherent in superiority involves inferiority, what has been assumed to make meaning primary could potentially make meaninglessness primary, and finally that death is inherent in life. Deconstruction merely destabilizes these oppositions.
My reading of “The Dead” does not attempt to unmask any ideologies associated in particular with James Joyce; rather, I will demonstrate how the text itself deconstructs the three logocentric binary oppositions mentioned above through a destabilization of Gabriel Conroy’s worldview and the climactic epiphany he experiences at the end of the story and thus provides a deeper understanding of what happens to Gabriel. In the introduction to Derrida, the editors of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism point out that:
What these ‘undecidables’ [the terms used to describe deconstruction as well as the word ‘deconstruction’ itself] [. . .] have in common is their displacement of what is normally taken for granted as the ground rules for a reading. In that sense, the logics they make visible and functional are generalizible—but they are not logics, if logic is understood as something separable from the text and generalizable apart from it. They are threads in it. (1819; original emphasis)
It is possible, then, for a text, apart from the author’s intensions, to deconstruct logocentrism found within the text’s own characters. These terms are already found in the text. Since it is the text itself that performs the work of deconstruction, it must not be read that Gabriel himself is aware of deconstruction at work, even though it is his worldview that is affected by the text’s deconstruction and he experiences those effects on a profound level. Rather, the events of the story point to commonly held logocentric beliefs regarding privileging in binary oppositions and how those are destabilized through Gabriel’s exchanges with other characters. The destabilization of these oppositions and their ultimate deconstruction through Gabriel’s epiphany opens the meaning of the text to more insightful understanding. Deconstruction is a product of the text itself, not a conscious aim of the author or any of the story’s characters.
In superiority over inferiority, the superior is seen as privileged in strength, intelligence, and power (wealth and social status) whereas the inferior, servant, or slave is powerless in the these areas. However, the logocentric view ignores the power in numbers that inferiors hold. While it is not universally true or inevitable that inferiors will have uprisings or be able to recognize or acknowledge that power, it is not universally true that they will not. Furthermore, inferiors, particularly servants and slaves, always control and provide whatever commodity their superiors want, and if the inferior refuses that commodity, the superior is stripped of power.
Gabriel’s first interaction is with Lily, the caretaker’s daughter. She is someone he has known for years, yet because he is of a higher class, he feels he is superior. He pretends not to know her at all and treats her like a child, asking, “Do you still go to school” (Joyce 23)? Gabriel’s superiority over Lily exists in class distinction. His power over her in this specific instance comes from his perceived ability to treat her as a child: as less than he is. Her commodity here, in terms of her as inferior, is to provide an answer that will fit her role as the servant. She does this by politely answering him, even though his question is rude. He continues the insult further, teasing her about getting married soon. Her immediate and bitter retort takes Gabriel completely by surprise and he “color[s] as if he felt he had made a mistake” (23). Lily completely undercuts Gabriel’s assumed authority by refusing to play along. He tries to salvage what authority he thought he had by forcing money on her, calling it a Christmas gift. Lily, does not take it willingly, but “seeing he had gained the stairs,” (24) decides she has no choice but to accept it. Gabriel is unable to prove himself superior over her, thus the power associated with superiority in logocentrism is denied, and through the text the privilege is deconstructed. Gabriel experiences immediate discomfort and embarrassment as a result of the text’s deconstruction.
Superiority is also present in the next scene. Not only does Gabriel force his wife, Gretta, to wear goloshes, but while she is explaining what they are, his “admiring and happy eyes [are] wandering from her dress to her face and hair” (25). Gabriel’s objectification of his wife only begins here. The text subtly tells the reader that Gabriel is a man who must be in control. Gretta explains to his aunts, in this same scene, what he makes their children do: “He’s really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom’s eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it!” (25). The text highlights Gabriel’s desire for superiority over others and makes the reader aware that it is not limited to house servants and his wife; he must control all that his children do as well. His children provide him superiority in their obedience. Even though they are forced, they still comply and are truly powerless to do anything about Gabriel’s demands, thus upholding the logocentric opposition. Gabriel, however, is not consciously aware that he privileges superiority, rather the text makes that clear through dialogue and descriptions such as this instance.
The way Western thought views meaning as dominant over what is meaningless is that an object or concept becomes meaningless only when meaning is removed from it. Therefore, in the logocentric view, meaninglessness is derivative of meaning. However, meaning can be achieved just as easily through the removal of meaninglessness from an object or concept. The two then become equal, but it is not that a “deeper sense” of meaninglessness is discovered as with superiority/inferiority or life/death. It may seem like the deconstruction of this opposition contradicts the concept that oppositions are not reversed because it is deconstructed through the reversal of the terms. However, through this reversal, the terms are equalized because what makes meaninglessness derivative is that meaning leaves it behind when meaning is removed. By reversing the terms, meaning becomes what is left when meaninglessness is removed.
In the scene following his exchange with Lily, meaning over meaninglessness is first introduced through Gabriel’s desire to impress. Gabriel isolates himself outside the drawing room door, listening to the guests dancing inside (24). Gabriel’s insecurity is further developed as he contemplates the speech he is to give before dinner. He decides not to quote the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers [. . .] The indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his [. . .] They would think he was airing his superior education [. . .] He would fail with them just as he had with the girl. (24) This fear of failure demonstrates Gabriel’s desire for meaningfulness that runs continually through the narrative. However, it does not only stem from his interactions with and desire to impress and not be embarrassed in front of other characters when he is speaking to them: everyone must appreciate his entire outward appearance at all times. With this example, the “threads” (Leitch 1819) that these oppositions are become woven together within the text. The text brings to light Gabriel’s belief that he is superior to the other guests at the party. Gabriel, as an academic, believes that his education is part of what makes him superior to them. He does not want them to take that away from through a failure of his speech due to its superior academic quality. If they do not understand what he says during his speech, then it becomes meaningless, and the guests will resent him for his superior education rather than admire him.
The text, through Gabriel’s exchange with Molly Ivors, his academic equal, reveals what is truly important to him. She accuses him of being disloyal to Ireland. Gabriel, admittedly is “sick of [his] own country” (Joyce 32). He refuses Miss Ivors invitation to join her on a visit to the Aran Isles because he has “already arranged to go [. . .] for a cycling tour” in “France and Belgium [. . .] partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change” (32). He is not concerned with his own country because, to him, it is meaningless. It does not serve the image he wants to project to others. Gabriel values the culture of the continent more than his own because it makes him feel superior, strengthening the meaning his life has through priveliging what he see as a superior culture. It frustrates him that no one else will recognize his value of continental culture as valid, an effect of deconstruction through the text at work, yet the only time he protests is in his outburst regarding how sick he is of Ireland. This allows an open door by which the text can easily deconstruct the oppositions at work. Gabriel’s worldview is made vulnerable because he is embarrassed by the reactions to his value of another culture over his own Irish heritage. He is frustrated that no one sees meaning in what he does, and because of that, he cannot feel the superiority he is used to having. The text demonstrates, especially in this instance, how superiority is valued not only through class and gender but culture as well. By the end of the narrative, the meaninglessness associated with his Irish culture will be removed and replaced with meaning thereby deconstructing the opposition.. The text prepares Gabriel’s worldview for deconstruction by providing a myriad of instances that hint at the oppositions and suggest that they will be destabilized in the end.
Life is privileged over death for a number of reasons. First, human beings, generally speaking, have no concrete knowledge of what happens after death. Death is a mystery whereas life is known. Furthermore, in death, one is seen as no longer active in life, no longer able to participate in what one did while alive. Death is part of the past, while the present and future belong to life. When this privilege is deconstructed, death is accepted as not just an inherent part of life, but as something with an active role in life, not life’s antithesis.
Prior to Gabriel’s dinner speech, Aunt Julia reminisces about Parkinson, who was “A beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor” (41). It is this talk of dead singers that prompts Gabriel to mention something about death in his speech. He speaks of the past and says:
Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die. (43) Gabriel’s assumption is that once someone dies, so does his or her memory. Only through fame can one’s memory live on because that fame, the important and significant achievements of that person deserve to live on in the hearts of humanity. He continues on, saying:
Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours. Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralizing intrude upon us here to-night. (44)
The text, through Gabriel’s speech, gives a practical example of what the logocentric view of the opposition is: Dwelling on death will hinder the progress of the living. There is an irony in that death and what Gabriel calls “gloomy moralizing” does intrude upon him in the end.
The text presents this privileging of life over death as a part of Gabriel’s image that he wants to project outward in his insatiable thirst for meaning. He equates life with the present and the future, while death is part of the past. The text represents the logocentric notion through Gabriel putting on this front regarding death, yet throughout the night, he is surrounded by images of and conversation about death, though he does not realize it until his epiphany at the end. Both his mother and father are dead. His uncle, Pat, is dead. In his aunts’ home hang pictures of the dead: “the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet [. . .] and beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower” (30). He listens to a conversation between Aunt Kate, Mr. Browne, and Mary Jane about monks who sleep in their coffins because “ ‘the coffin [. . .] is to remind them of their last end’” (42). The text provides a brief glimpse for the reader into what the deconstruction of life over death might look like. It is also possible that Gabriel desires escape from his own culture because he sees it as dead or dying as well. It is this separation of life from death, and Gabriel’s favoring of life over death that is deconstructed through his wife’s story. Both superiority/inferiority and meaning/meaninglessness are woven into the deconstruction of life/death and the catalyst by which the text deconstructs all three is the story of Michael Furey. The epiphany is what Gabriel experiences as a result of the text deconstructing his worldview.
Before Gretta tells the story of this childhood love, the text continues demonstrate logocentric superiority/inferiority as Gabriel not only objectifies his wife but fantasizes about completely and brutally dominating her. While he and Gretta make their way to their hotel room, “he long[s] to be alone with her” and imagines the scene when they will finally be alone in their hotel room and he can have her (52). His desire for her continues to rise throughout their cab ride, and he is “happy that she [is] his, proud of her grace and wifely carriage” (53). In Gabriel’s mind, Gretta belongs to him; because she is his wife, she is also his property and will do what he wants when he wants her to. He wants to get her into bed; he knows that he must woo her gently, but the impulses of his body are making it difficult. His body tells him to force her. Yet, he dismisses those feelings and speaks to her casually “in a false voice” (54) trying to build up the nerve to begin. He decides “he must see some ardour in her eyes first” yet “[h]e long[s] to be superior of her strange mood” (54). This desire for superiority over Gretta builds in Gabriel until “a fever of rage and desire” consumes him and “he long[s] to cry to her from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her” (54). These brutal feelings of superiority are completely destabilized when Gretta reveals she is not thinking about him at all. She is “thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim” (55) and her past love, Michael Furey.
Gretta’s story about this childhood love brings Gabriel’s selfishness to the full attention of the reader. The text destabilizes the opposition much in the same way it does with Lily. Because sexual tension based on a desire to fulfill his role as Gretta’s superior is undercut, he, as with Lily, experiences frustration, then flusters and quickly attempts to regain control as a result of this destabilization. He mocks, “O then, you were in love with him? [. . .] Perhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl?” (56), completely ignoring his wife’s feelings, vexed in his awareness that he has lost his power over her to someone from her past. Because of his logocentric worldview, Gabriel cannot comprehend why Gretta would have such strong emotion towards a person who is no longer a part of her life and because the text has deconstructed this worldview, Gabriel experiences a shattering of everything he has known. Michael Furey is part of the past, and although Gabriel does not yet know that Michael Furey is dead or why he died, people of the past have no place in the present except as a way for Gabriel to bring more meaning to his own life. The story of Michael Furey and Gabriel’s epiphany that follows involves all three binary oppositions: The text removes power from Gabriel as superior because Gretta will not give him what he wants; it removes the meaninglessness Gabriel associated with Western Ireland and replaces it with meaning, thereby undermining the privilege meaning had over meaninglessness; finally, it shows Gabriel the power someone in death can have over anyone living and the inevitability of death in life.
When Gabriel finally finds out how Michael Furey died, he, at first, still tries to deny the connection that life and death share and writes off Gretta’s experience as nothing important. “So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake,” Gabriel thinks, and tries to convince himself that “it hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her husband, had played in her life” (58), even though it really does pain him. It is at this moment that the experiences of the night begin to culminate, allowing the text to deconstruct the logocentrism of Gabriel’s beliefs. What Gabriel experiences as a result of this deconstruction is his world falling apart around him. Logocentrism regarding superiority has been deconstructed three times in the text: by Lily, Miss Ivors, and now by Gretta. Gretta’s focus on Michael Furey rather than Gabriel has demonstrated equality in power that the supposed inferior can have. Meaning/meaninglessness is deconstructed in that Gabriel now knows “[t]he time had come for him to set out on his journey westward’ (59)—his journey to West Ireland with Gretta. West Ireland, during his exchange with Miss Ivors, is nothing more than a meaningless, dead culture and language to him. Meaninglessness regarding the West has been removed by the text through the epiphany and replaced with meaning. It is meaningful to him because Gabriel realizes if he is to be happy—to see Gretta happy—he must travel west with her. Death too has found meaning whereas before it was meaningless to Gabriel. Through these, meaning is left when meaninglessness is removed, thus deconstructing what was thought to be primary.
Finally, the text deconstructs life over death. Gabriel begins to think of all the people whom he knows now—who are alive—but who will someday succumb to death. He imagines Aunt Kate and himself mourning the death of Aunt Julia. Suddenly, “[o]ne by one they were all becoming shades” (58), and Gabriel realizes that everyone he knows, including himself, will someday die. He also sees how deep an impact Michael Furey’s death has had on Gretta: “He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love” (59). He would never have thought someone in death could have such power on the living. The story has not only affected Gretta deeply, but now Gabriel as well, causing him to reevaluate what he sees as important. Gabriel lies in bed, watching the snow fall “upon all the living and the dead” (59), equalizing both and finally deconstructing the most prevalent opposition in the narrative.
The deconstruction of logocentrism in Gabriel’s worldview through the text provides a deeper look into what actually occurs during his epiphany. Rather than just a realization regarding his shortcomings as a man, academic, and husband, the very root of his person, the basis for all his behavior and belief, is completely destabilized during his epiphany through deconstruction of the text and he experiences the ruination of his being. Describing the epiphany in this way provides a clearer possible answer for the question of what actually happens to Gabriel. If the text has destabilized what made Gabriel who he was throughout the story, someone who based everything on logocentrism as demonstrated through the text, then Gabriel’s epiphany has indeed transformed him.
Works Cited
Culler, Jonathan. “Semiotics and Deconstruction.” Poetics Today 1.1/2 Special Issue:Literature, Interpretation, Communication (Autumn 1979): 137-41.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Joyce, James. “The Dead.” The Dead: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Daniel R.
Schwarz. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994.
Leitch, Vincent B., ed. “Jacques Derrida: 1930-2004.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and
Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Melchert, Norman. The Great Conversation: Volume II: Decartes through Derrida and Quine.
4th Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2002.
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