The Dead (short story) The Dead (short story) "The Dead" is the final story in the 1914 collection "Dubliners" by James Joyce. The other stories in the collection are shorter, whereas at 15,952 words, "The Dead" is long enough to be described as a novella. The story deals with themes of love and loss as well as raising questions about the nature of the Irish identity. Gabriel Conroy, Gretta Conroy, Kate and Julia Morkan, and Bartell d'Arcy are all alluded to in James Joyce's later work, "Ulysses", though no character from "The Dead" makes a direct appearance in the novel. The story centres on
The Seven Heroes and Five Gallants Trap" that the heroes and gallants set out to destroy in the 1879 original was still not destroyed by the end of the book. Instead, the novel ends on a cliff-hanger to entice its readers to purchase the next installment, which was published in 1891 as "The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants" (續小五義). Both sequels enjoyed huge readership and were reprinted many times. Lu Xun believed "these works were written by many hands... resulting in numerous inconsistencies." Two alternative sequels to the original novel are: Shi Duo in his preface to "The Sequel to the Five Younger Gallants" denounced