“The Dead” is set in early 20th-century Dublin (like the other stories in Dubliners), and specifically, at the home owned by Kate and Julia, Gabriel Conroy’s aunts, at Christmastime. Joyce's vivid imagery brings their bustling house, and the lively Christmas party, into focus, with elaborate descriptions of their Christmas meal, their formal outfits, and the traditional songs the guests and hostesses perform.
At the same time, Gabriel—in part because of his own anxieties about the party—often reflects on the city that lies outside of the house. “How cool it must be outside!” he thinks at one point. “How pleasant it would be to walk out alone […] The snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument.” Later, as he is about to begin his speech, Gabriel returns to the Wellington Monument, envisioning the bustling city around him, though he cannot directly see it: “People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside […] The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow.” Though Gabriel claims to be unattached to Ireland, he also seems unable to cut himself off from it altogether, or to quell the peripatetic motions of his mind. Gabriel’s reflections also create a sense of simultaneity, as he imagines his reality in concurrence with the realities experienced by the people “standing in the snow on the quay outside.” Here, Joyce seems to be experimenting with a modernist technique that he will expand upon in his later work, chiefly his novel Ulysses—attempting to depict many realities and perspectives, all within one setting, at once.
