User talk:Rlgreenb

Excellent. Nice job setting up your talk page and links! Csforster (talk) 17:59, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Inspiration

It isn't only the character of Michael Furey that is believed to be based off of aspects of Joyce's own experiences. Additionally, it is widely acknowledged and accepted that Joyce's own disdain and love for Ireland was the fuel behind "The Dead" and the rest of, Dubliners. Jim LeBlanc suggests that Joyce used "The Dead" as an outlet to express his complicated feelings regarding his own time in Ireland. LeBlanc writes that the story represents Joyce's struggle to leave behind the corpse of Ireland that continues to haunt him throughout his writing career. He argues that Joyce writing about fictional characters living their own lives in Dublin is simply Joyce letting go of and finally gaining freedom from his own haunted Ireland. Despite Joyce's travels and journeys, he was never able to leave Ireland mentally and his writing in, "The Dead," exemplifies that.

Michael Patrick Gillespie talks about the multi-faceted view of his native country Joyce offers in, "The Dead." Gillespie says that Joyce was one of the first Irish artists to stand against the patriarchal traditional writers of Ireland. He writes that there was little room for independent creativity in Ireland but Joyce was determined to break out of this refinement. He writes, "Dublin was neither easy nor pleasant for Joyce, as his early letters from Pola and Trieste to his family in Ireland confirm." Gillespie's article quotes many of Joyce's letters to his family members living around Ireland. The letters include continuous proof that the real Dublin, the one that raised and informed Joyce, is at the heart of Joyce's fictional works. Gillespie quotes a letter from Joyce to a family member: "I want... to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book." There's no room for question in regards to where most if not all of Joyce's inspiration as well as ideas come from.

Gillespie also says that it's very clear that James Joyce held a certain disdain for Ireland, even if it was one he couldn't explain and sometimes denied. He writes that Joyce's negativity towards the control and limits of Ireland colored his writing in, "The Dead," and that Joyce was trying to recreate Ireland and look back on his own Irish life. Gillespie quotes one of Joyce's letters, "Sometimes thinking of Ireland it seems to me I have been unnecessarily harsh. I have reproduced... none of the attraction of the city for I have never felt at my ease in any city since I left it..." Gillespie demonstrates that Joyce was constantly at odds about the way he portrayed Ireland and his works, especially, "The Dead," display his constant critiques and apologies regarding Ireland.