Psychoanalytic analysis of Gabriel in Joyce's The Dead
...at he acts as a representative of the paralyzed society of Dublin. Moreover Gabriel's transformation and the phenomena, which have led to this event, are worth focusing on and they are going to be discussed throughout this study. This way the researcher does a psychological analysis of the story's protagonist's character to clarify the responses of the posed problems for the reader. During this study it becomes clear that although Gabriel is a man of words he is deprived of words and he fails to connect in a convenient way with other people. He is affected by a kind of social clumsiness, which is related to emptiness within. Finally he himself realizes that he had always spoken in abstraction; his language is full of banalities and on the whole he lives in cliches. Gabriel allows himself to become a function of the perception of others; another way of putting it is to say that Gabriel is realized by the knowledge that he is part of the perception of others, and seeks fulfillment and completion in the opinion of others. Yet paradoxically, he is uncomfortable with himself and dislikes being the focus; he longs to be elsewhere. The integrity of Gabriel’s personality is threatened by a disbelief in the authenticity of self. This is the same problem of all the people experiencing modernism. He is at once someone who thinks he is always the object of the gazes of others. Of course it is understood that the one who is always watching Gabriel is Gabriel himself. And he also cares too much about the approval of others. It is mentioned that Gabriel thinks of himself as a pennyboy; he plays this role because he has a desperate desire to be needed. They are a...