Ecocriticism in "The Dead" by Erica Tucker

            When I first heard the term “ecocriticism”, I thought, “Oh, great. The tree huggers are trying to take over literature now, too.” I have nothing against the protection of the environment. I try to recycle, use a re-usable water bottle, and walk or bike instead of drive when I can, but I doubt you’ll ever see me at a “Save the Earth” rally. When I began researching for this essay, however, I found there are more ways to approach a text using ecocriticism than just trying to pick out obscure passages and prove the true meaning of the text is “humans are destroying the earth.”

Cheryll Glotfelty in “The EcoCriticism Reader” says “all ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it”(xix). I believe that to be true, and began to see the possibilities within that premise. Ecocritics can ask questions like: “What role does physical setting play in the plot of this novel?” “What view of nature informs U.S. Government reports, corporate advertising, and televised nature documentaries?” and “How has the concept of wilderness changed over time?” (Glotfelty, xix). While those questions could be used to make the argument that “humans are destroying the earth”, they could also be taken in less radical ways as well.

            In this essay, I will attempt to use ecocriticism in a slightly unconventional way. Most ecocritics focus their attention outside and try to analyze nature itself as a character in the story. I will be looking at the ways in which nature can affect people and their relationships with each other. In this way, I will analyze Gabriel and Gretta’s relationship in “The Dead” by James Joyce, by arguing the separation in their relationship is caused by their opposing viewpoints and relationships with nature. After concluding my analysis, I will further look at ecocriticism as a theoretical approach in general, and discuss whether or not I believe (after applying it) I feel it is a valuable approach.

            “The Dead” by James Joyce is set in Usher’s Island, Ireland, which is described in a footnote as “an industrial section dominated by the Guinness Brewery”(Joyce, 22). The main character is Gabriel Conroy, a high-class, well-educated man who lives with his wife, Gretta, and their children in Monkstown, “a prosperous village to the southeast of Dublin”(Joyce, 25). The majority of the story takes place at a lavish party in Gabriel’s Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia’s house and ends in Gabriel and Gretta’s hotel room. It is Christmastime, and “snow was general all over Ireland”(Joyce, 59).

            When reading “The Dead”, I noticed most of the interactions Gabriel and Gretta have with each other are somehow connected to nature and tend to emphasize their different views of it. While Gabriel enjoys the city and takes measures to intentionally avoid the more natural setting of the country, Gretta thinks of the country as her home and wishes she could return to it and spend more time outdoors. Their opposing ideas and lack of wanting to understand the others position causes a divide in their relationship that ultimately cannot be fully bridged.

            We get a glimpse into this divide early on in the story. When Gabriel and Gretta arrive at the party, they enter into a conversation with Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia about where they’re going after the party. Gabriel explains they got a room in a hotel nearby because last year Gretta caught a dreadful cold from the long cab ride back home and he did not want to risk that happening again (Joyce, 25). What’s interesting is his follow up statement: “But as for Gretta there, said Gabriel, she’d walk home in the snow if she were let”(Joyce, 25). This statement clearly shows how different the two are in terms of their preferences of being outdoors. While Gabriel would rather take a cab ride to a nearby hotel to avoid being outside in the cold at all, he admits Gretta is the complete opposite and would rather walk in the snow.

            The conversation continues with Gretta joking with the two aunts about Gabriel making her wear goloshes. Previously, upon arrival, it is twice mentioned that Gabriel stands on the entry mat and scrapes the snow from his goloshes, trying to rid every bit of evidence that he had been outside from his shoes. Gretta, to the aunts, says, “you’ll never guess what he makes me wear now!...Goloshes! Whenever it’s wet underfoot I must put on my goloshes. To-night even he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn’t. The next thing he’ll buy me will be a diving suit”(Joyce, 25). Gretta’s attitude expressed in her comments is one of mocking. The idea of covering her feet from snow and rain is just as absurd to her as wearing a diving suit when swimming. She seems like she enjoys the sensations nature can provide much more than Gabriel, who always wears his goloshes and rides in cabs to “protect” him from the same elements Gretta enjoys.

            Another enlightening scene between Gabriel and Gretta is right after Gabriels conversation with Miss Ivors. In that conversation, Miss Ivors asks Gabriel if he would like to come on a trip to the Aran Isles (“Off Galway on the West Coast, they were regarded as an ideal by the Celtic Renaissance because Irish was spoken and the denizens lived, supposedly, a utopian agrarian life”(Joyce, 31)). She suggests Gretta come too because she is from there, to which Gabriel responds, “her people are”(Joyce, 31).  After the proposal, Gabriel admits he has already made plans to go on a cycling trip with friends to France, Belgium, or Germany. The next bit of dialogue is as such:

            Miss Ivors: “Instead of visiting your own land?”

Gabriel: “Well, it’s partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change.”

            Miss Ivors: “And haven’t you your own language to keep in touch with—Irish?”

            Gabriel: “Well, if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language.”

            Miss Ivors: “And haven’t you your own land to visit, that you know nothing of, y            our own people, and your own country?”

            Gabriel: “O, to tell you the truth, I’m sick of my own country, sick of it!”

            From this conversation, we learn that Gabriel does not want to visit the countryside where his wife is from. In fact he feels no draw to it whatsoever. When looking at this scene through the lens of Neil Evernden’s “territoriality” argument, part of which encompasses the belief that “the environmental repertoire is vastly diminished in urban life, perhaps to the point of making genuine attachment to a place very difficult”(Evernden, 100-101), it could be argued that the reason Gabriel denies his own country is he doesn’t feel connected to it. He has been a product of the city for a long time and the urban environment could be what’s keeping him from feeling the draw of his own country’s natural landscape.

            Gretta, on the other hand, is a country girl at heart and when Gabriel tells her Miss Ivors wanted them to go on a trip to the west of Ireland Gretta “clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump” then said, “O, do go, Gabriel, she cried. I’d love to see Galway again” to which Gabriel replied coldly, “You can go if you like”(Joyce, 33). Gretta looks at Gabriel for a minute and then turns to the woman sitting next to him and says, “there’s a nice husband for you”(Joyce, 34). This encounter is sad because it shows how disconnected the two are in understanding why the other feels the way they do about nature. Gabriel knows about his wife’s passion for her home country, but he doesn’t consider going to visit because he doesn’t see the value in it. Gretta is clearly excited at the possibility of going home, but when Gabriel coldly tells her he wants no part in going, she is hurt. Instead of asking why, she sarcastically says, “there’s a nice husband for you.” They have conflicting interests, but never take the time to understand the other.

            Later, when Gretta and Gabriel make it back to the hotel (in a taxi), Gabriel notices she seems more distant than usual. Inwardly, he is lusting after her and hoping they will have a romantic evening together. Gretta is on a completely different plain of thought. Back at the party she had been listening to “The Lass of Aughrim” and admits to Gabriel in the hotel it made her think of a boy named Michael she used to “go out walking with”(Joyce, 56) as a girl. Before she left the country, Michael came to her house in the middle of the night in pouring rain, even though he was ill, to see her. He died a week after she left and she thinks he died for her (Joyce, 56-57). This information alarms Gabriel and angers him because “while he had been full of memories of their secret life together, full of tenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind with another”(Joyce, 56). When Gretta begins to cry over the memory, Gabriel leaves her be, unable to comfort her.

            This section is particularly interesting to my analysis because it provides a comparison of Gabriel to Michael and gives insight into what Gretta may be missing. Gretta is mourning not just Michael Fury, but also the loss of her homeland and the nature there. Whenever Gretta was with Michael, she was outside. She went walking with him regularly through the country, and when he came to see her at last, he was outside in the rain by a tree. To Gretta, Michael represents not only her first love and a man that was passionately in love with her, but the experience of love in the natural place she feels most connected to. Gabriel doesn’t like being outside and takes preventative action against having to come into contact with any element of nature. That is opposite of what Michael did. Therefore, Gretta is not just mourning Michael and her home; she is mourning the part of her relationship with Gabriel she knows has never been and will never be the same as it was with Michael.

            Gabriel’s response to this information at the very end is extremely ambiguous. One possible interpretation according to my reading of the text is that Gabriel comes to the hard realization that, after learning about his wife’s first love, their relationship has never been what he thought it was. He admits, “he had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love”(Joyce, 59). He would never go on long walks through the country with a woman or risk his life by freezing in a rainstorm to tell a woman he loved her. When thinking about this, his mind wanders to what Michael would have looked like under that tree standing in front of his wife.

He felt “his own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling”(Joyce, 59). Gabriel feels the world and life as he knew it, is turning grey and indiscernible. He knew Gretta holds a passion for nature and the country, but the realization that another man in her life was better able to satisfy her passions has unsettling effects on him. Their relationship has it’s faults, as we saw throughout the story, but Gabriel thought things were fine they way they were. It is not until the end that he realizes it isn’t as good as he thought it was, and knowing that will keep it from ever being the same again.

            Now, some of you may have read my analysis of “The Dead” and thought, “Wow, I never thought of it that way, that was enlightening.” Or some of you may have read it and thought, “This girl has entirely missed the point of the story.” Both of those are fine. If you thought the point of the story was completely missed, you would probably appreciate a different, more traditional theoretical approach. Approaches like deconstruction and new criticism keep their focus in the text itself and try to analyze what the text is saying based on the language (new criticism) or the conceptual oppositions found there (deconstruction). New critics believe the text is a self-contained object; everything can be found in the words themselves. They do not look to outside factors to help analyze at all, they only look at the words on the page and from that they determine the truth found within the text. Deconstructionists believe language itself is indeterminate and when we try to interpret it we use the same indeterminate language, therefore resulting in no “end result” or “one true meaning” but rather describing the multiple ways the text deconstructs itself.

            Other forms of analysis look outside the text, but in different ways than ecocriticism does. For example, new historicism analyzes texts by centering their analysis on the time period the book was written in and looks for ways the history of the time influences the text.  Reader response theory focuses on what the reader is doing as they interpret a text. For example, Stanley Fish suggests readers view everything through a pre-conceived lens. If they know they are reading poetry, they will read it differently than if they are reading a novel, etc. These four methods are just a few out of the many possible to analyze texts that differ from what ecocritics do when they look at a text.

            Ecocritics, as mentioned in my introduction, focus their analysis on place and the environment and how that affects the text’s plot and characters. Like S. K. Robisch says in her essay “Ecological Narrative and Nature Writing”, “no prose is written out of place”(Robisch, 177) and therefore place serves as an important mode through which to view literature. Ecocritics believe the setting of a text is the most important element of the story because it is impossible for man to exist out of context (Evernden, 95). By looking at the context of the story and how the characters react and respond to their environment can be very telling of the story as a whole. Clearly, from the examples of other methods of analysis I described earlier, this is a very different and sometimes radical way to read a text.

            Its differences are not necessarily always negative. Some of the strengths of ecocriticism, I think, are its way of forcing the reader to think outside (literally) of the box. By focusing the readers attention on what is happening outside the minds of the characters or the author and looking at what role the environment is playing it can bring to light new ways of thinking about the story. While more traditional methods use the same approach each time for every text, ecocriticsm can be used in multiple ways, often in the same text. Just to use “The Dead” as an example, I could have applied ecocriticsm by examining the snow’s role in the story. The snow is mentioned multiple times and I could have analyzed it as a character in and of itself, or I could have looked at the effects it has on the characters. Another way to approach “The Dead” using ecocriticism would have been to focus solely on the urban environment and draw a thesis based on how the city life acts as a “wall” or “cage” for Gabriel that keeps him from appreciating nature in the way others seem to be able to do.

            While ecocriticism does have some benefits, it is not a perfect approach, and has some limitations as well. For example, I used my opening comments of this essay to make a point. Sometimes ecocriticism seems like a form of activism. According to Glotfelty, most ecocritical work shares a common motivation, which is, “the troubling awareness that we have reached the age of environmental limits, a time when the consequences of human actions are damaging our planet’s basic life support system”(xx). She further says, if we don’t change our ways we will “face global catastrophe, destroying much beauty and exterminating countless fellow species in our headlong race to apocalypse”(xx). To me, that motivation doesn’t sound like literary analysis at all, it sounds like environmental activism.

            As I said in my opening statements, I am not against protecting the environment, but I don’t think reading books for the specific purpose of showing people the environment is dying and its all our fault is the best way to determine the true meaning or value in a text. When ecocritics begin to stretch their analysis towards activism, they lose me. For example, I could have decided to analyze the snow in “The Dead” and ultimately come to the conclusion that it’s snowing all over Ireland because the environment is sad and cold and crying out for people to save it. To me, that seems to take away from the beauty and value of “The Dead”. Sometimes I feel ecocritics are so focused on making their analysis work that they lose the value of the text and sometimes even offend it by stretching it too far.

            With that being said, I do not think ecocriticism is always a bad way to analyze a text. My experience using it to analyze “The Dead” was surprisingly enjoyable and it did in fact make me think of the text in a completely new way that I had not thought about before. In that sense, it is helpful because it can bring to light new possibilities. In my particular analysis, it forced me to look at Gabriel and Gretta’s relationship in a new light. Rather than trying to analyze the riff between the two of them in terms of personality traits or context clues, I took a step back and was able to look at it differently and ultimately I think that was beneficial for my overall understanding of them as characters, the environment they are living in, and the story as a whole.

Works Cited

Evernden, Neil. “Beyond Ecology: Self, Place, and the Pathetic Fallacy.” The

Ecocriticism Reader. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens And London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. 92-104. Print.

Glotfelty, Cheryll. “Introduction: Literaty Studies in an Age of Environmental Crisis.”

The Ecocriticism Reader. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens And London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996. xv-xxv. Print.

Joyce, James. "The Dead." Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Ed. Daniel R.

Schwarz. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 1994. 21-59. Print.

Robisch, S. K. "Ecological Narrative and Nature Writing." A Companion to American

Fiction 1865-1914. Ed. Robert P. Lamb and G. R. Thompson. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. 177-200. Print.