"The Dead,” which is set at the turn of the century, is marked by references to Irish nationalism and Ireland's religious divide: the conflicts between Catholic Irish nationalists and pro-British Protestants that will eventually come to a head during the country's partition in the 1920s.
Characters refer to these fundamental conflicts in veiled, offhand ways, which only serves to emphasize how contentious the divisions are. For example, Mary Jane describes Mr. Browne as coming from "the other persuasion,” meaning Protestantism, and Miss Ivors calls Gabriel a "West Briton," in reference to his supposed loyalty to the British. Gabriel's dinnertime speech, in which he criticizes the “new generation” of Irish youth for lacking a quality of “hospitality,” serves as a rejoinder, in part, to the nationalism Miss Ivors and other young people express—though again, without explicitly addressing their political opinions or the religious divide.
Gabriel seems to want to escape his own surroundings in part because of these simmering tensions, which breed hostility instead of “hospitality," and provoke discomfort for him. Like other older Irish people, Gabriel is fearful of radicalism, since it represents a threat to the established social order, under whose conditions he has already succeeded and prospered: any changes to that order could ostensibly impact his own life by diminishing his own power.
"The Dead," like many of James Joyce's stories and novels, is rife with a number of literary allusions, signaling Joyce's keen awareness of literary tradition. A voracious reader from childhood, Joyce was deeply familiar with the Western canon and stalwarts of 19th-century British literature, as well as the work of near-contemporaries like W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet.
In "The Dead," Gabriel quotes the English poet Robert Browning during his dinnertime speech, whose intricate language he fears will "be above the heads of his hearers." Gabriel also spies a picture of the balcony scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in Kate and Julia's home, and compares his aunts and his cousin, Mary Jane, to the Three Graces, three goddesses in Greek mythology said to represent youth and beauty, mirth, and elegance. Shortly thereafter, Gabriel alludes to Paris, a pivotal figure in Greek mythology who helped to jumpstart the Trojan War by eloping with the Spartan queen Helen.
These references provide a road map of sorts to Joyce's wide-ranging reading habits, while also demonstrating Gabriel's own literary background and inclinations. Indeed, Gabriel might be seen as one of Joyce's fictional personas or avatars, similar to Stephen Dedalus (from his later novels Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses), whose biography shares much in common with Joyce's. Joyce regarded himself as a writer with many influences, working within British and Western traditions while also seeking to innovate—carving out a separate place for himself as a modernist pioneer, and an Irish writer who opposed British colonization. Similarly, Gabriel—well-educated like Joyce, with a different "grade of culture" from the other party guests—is profoundly influenced by and drawn to tradition, as evidenced by his fierce defense of Ireland's "unique" tradition of "hospitality" in his speech. Yet he also considers himself a free thinker, unbound to convention and capable of forming his own strong opinions. For example, his dinnertime speech functions as a vehicle for airing out his own political grievances and advancing a personal argument in favor of a kind of conservatism.
