How the narrative style and structure of the Joyce's The Dead contribute to key themes in the novel

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This essay will attempt to analysis how the narrative style and structure of The Dead contribute to key themes in the novel. The use of Joyce's narrative technique of combining first person voices with third person narrative will be examined. The essay will also detail how the story's structure, through means of symbolism, naturalism, irony and word play embodies themes such as paralysis and gnomon.

Unlike the first three stories in Joyce's Dubliners, which are written in the first person, The Dead and all other stories are told from the third person point of view but from no one fixed perspective. The subtle way Joyce exploits the use of free indirect speech creates the effect for the reader of 'hearing' first person voices within a third person narrative allowing character's to be exposed. This narrative technique is exemplified in the story's opening paragraphs:

Lily...was literally run off her feet....and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. (1993:122)

The narrative is at once specific to grab the reader's attention and focalised through Lily then proceeds to shift backwards and forwards through the focalisation and free indirect speech of the Morkan's and