Gabriel, the most prestigious and successful nephew, has always felt a sense of empowerment through knowledge and money. Gabriel is the son of Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia’s dead eldest sister Ellen. Gabriel writes a literary column every Wednesday in the Daily Express and also teaches in the college. During Gabriel’s speech, he states “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 living duties and living affections which claim and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavors…Therefore I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralizing intrude upon us here tonight.” This speech means that one should not ponder about the past however, one should focus on the future and move on from any past hardships one has encountered. This is ironic that Gabriel’s speech is about this topic because of what his wife Gretta breaks down about. During the dinner, the song The Lass of Aughrim was sang, which reminded Gretta of Michael Furey, who was her first love. Joyce states “Then the night before I left I was in my grandmother’s house in Nun’s island, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window. The window was so wet I couldn’t see so I ran downstairs as I was and slipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at the end of the garden shivering…I implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his death in the rain.” This quote is significant because Michael Furey died that same week. Gretta believes “she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her sake.” Gabriel is stunned when he hears all of this. Many thoughts of regret and despair cross through his mind. He is hurt that his wife has felt such true love for another man. He “thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.”
Joyce states “Perhaps she had not told him all the story” because he wanted the reader to immediately know that this was true love. She did not say more because she didn’t want to hurt Gabriel more than she already did but she was so torn apart that she had to get this off her chest. She felt such remorse towards the dead rather from the living.
dustinbreitner 