THE WEST OF IRELAND AND “THE DEAD”.

THE WEST OF IRELAND AND THE “THE DEAD”. Kids, I have posted about Achill Island and about how my father used to say that our ancestors on both sides had lived in places which no conqueror would want to conquer. Your Irish ancestors came from Achill Island and from County Mayo—in the West of Ireland. I have been rereading James Joyce’s DUBLINERS in connection with a trip to Dublin. I have also been reading criticism. Mary Jane and I have the same favorite short story: “The Dead.” An essay by Richard Ellmann describes what the West of Ireland represents to one of the characters in the story. Gabriel Conroy, the protagonist (and a Dubliner), loves his wife, but “in spite of his uxorious attitude towards Gretta he is a little ashamed of her having come from the west of Ireland….He has rescued her from that bog.” “…The west is associated in Gabriel’s mind with a dark and rather painful primitivism….The west is savagery….” But the west comes to take on a different meaning in the story. Gabriel realizes that “Gretta Conroy’s west is the place where life had been lived simply and passionately.”