The Dead (short story) and Shaun Davey, which won a Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. The original production starred Christopher Walken as Gabriel Conroy. Joyce Carol Oates's 1973 story "The Dead" makes many allusions to Joyce's 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,
The Dead (short story) expands past him, edging into the surreal and encompassing the entirety of Ireland. As the story ends, we are told that "His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Dan Barry of "The New York Times" called "The Dead" "just about the finest short story in the English language" on the centennial of "Dubliners". T. S. Eliot called it one of greatest short stories ever written. Joyce biographer and critic Richard Ellmann wrote, "In its lyrical, melancholy