O’Hehir, Brendan. “Structural Symbol in Joyce’s ‘The Dead.’” Twentieth Century Literature 3.1 (April, 1957): 3-13.

          As Gabriel Conroy’s first appearance in his own person in “The Dead,” on the third page of the story in the Modern Library edition, his first act is to scrape the snow from his galoshes. That the snow has a symbolic value has been noted by almost every commentator upon the story, but little attention has been concentrated upon the galoshes. They cannot be equated with Gabriel himself–they are “accidents” inhering in his “essence”–but, taken at face value, they are perfectly adequate symbols to countervail the snow. Galoshes exist specifically to resist snow, to protect and insulate against it. Furthermore, galoshes are artificial, man-made defiances of nature and the elements. They typify man’s prideful but puny attempt to defeat the eternal and overwhelming universe. Man must shelter himself, or at least his feet, in his overshoes; therefore Gabriel’s galoshes, and not himself, most adequately symbolize opposition to the snow.

          But Joyce has elaborated the significance of Gabriel’s galoshes into the symbolic key to his tragic position between his wife and the ghost of his mother. In the Dublin of the Conroys and the Misses Morkan galoshes are exotic importations from abroad, viewed with the same suspicion as all things continental. Gabriel’s importation of galoshes–a maternally-induced characteristic–is an index of his alienation from the norms of the ambient culture.

          Analysis of a passage early in the story will extricate some of the meanings tangled in association with Gabriel’s galoshes. Gabriel has joined his wife and his aunts upstairs, where conversation turns about his prudent plan to spend the night at the Gresham Hotel in town rather than travel home to Monkstown: “But as for Gretta there,” he remarks, “she’d walk home in the snow if she were let.”

          Gretta’s rejoinder identifies her more closely with the party of the snow, and reveals how unsympathetic she is toward his attempts to control his environment:

          “Don’t mind him, Aunt Kate,” she said. “He’s really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom’s eyes at night and making him do the dumbbells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it! . . . O, but you’ll never guess what he makes me wear now!”

             She broke out into a peal of laughter . . .

             “Goloshes!” said Mrs. Conroy. “That’s the latest. Whenever it’s wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn’t. The next thing he’ll buy me will be a diving suit.”

          Gretta would let nature take its course with her children as with the weather. Gabriel dominates what he can, and what he cannot he will shut out, by galoshes, cabs and hotel rooms.

•        This is an example of the beginning of an analysis essay on symbolism in “The Dead” (first published in 1957).

•        Note how the writer does not define what symbolism is. For the purposes of academic writing at this level, it can be safely assumed that your reading audience knows the definitions of basic literary terms as used in your argument. Only if you are using a term with some specialized or unusual sense or meaning do you need to stress what you understand the definition of the term to be.

•        The argument begins in general terms. Note that the author includes what we might call a statement of limitations–i.e. a short notice that the essay plans to leave out what many readers might expect to be the obvious example – precisely because it is too obvious. O’Hehir notes that snow as a symbol has been very frequently studied already, therefore he proposes to look at Gabriel’s galoshes instead.

•        Because he does not propose to say that the galoshes are simply a symbolic representation of Gabriel himself, O’Hehir includes another paragraph further refining and explaining what his main idea is before he starts employing direct quotation of supporting evidence.

•        The fact that the writer gives more direct supporting evidence of Gretta’s position than of Gabriel’s suggests (though does not prove) that the writer agrees more with Gretta’s perspective. The quantity of his direct evidence is not equally balanced, but is weighted in Gretta’s favour.

•        If you were going to start with something like this as part of an analysis essay on symbolism in “The Dead,” you might continue to set up a couple of further paragraphs talking about other ways in which Gabriel seems to distance himself from his immediate surroundings – kinds of “mental galoshes” that he wears – such as writing for a pro-British paper, vacationing outside Ireland, thinking his speech may be too intellectually demanding for his audience, etc.

•        This is a good example of a topic that lends itself to development using several examples from the same story.

•        NB: There is no single right way to do this assignment, nor is there a step-by-step checklist of how to do it right that will work for all students and all topics equally well. There are many different acceptable approaches. Your instructors can always provide the most specific and useful help and advice when you have already chosen a topic and primary text(s). Then, attention can be focused on how directly to handle a specific concern, rather than on a more vague list of things you might do before a choice of direction is made.

A final note: We also mentioned the literary device known as the epiphany, compared light-heartedly but with some accuracy, to the moment seen in so many cartoons when a light-bulb illuminates above the head of a character who has just had a brilliant idea or finally understood something. A fuller definition is given in the glossary.