An Analysis of The DeadTo start in the absolutely least likely place, here we have another version of family life in Ireland (moving east , and from there, passing through The Snapper, form a unit contrasting with the previous one), with another way of describing what the Irish consider to be their insularity and their closedness, their ridiculous desire for union with the supposedly superior culture but foreign to the “continent”, and above all this confusion and torment about sexuality which results so well from it. directly from the inability of the Irish Church to reconcile desire as sin and desire as an affirmation of life. Fact (at least according to a major recent survey): Married Catholics have better sex than other married Americans. For what? It has been suggested that one cannot so fully preach the analogy between the union of man and woman with the union of Christ and his Church and, indeed, of man with God without give a celebratory twist to marital love. But this would be inconceivable to the Irish, whose Church (although a dominant influence on American Catholicism) focuses on the ascetic and the equation between sex and sin. In a sense, because he is so firmly rooted in that tradition, countering Joyce seems both hopelessly dated and eternal: hopelessly dated because we don't have enough residue of the sense of sin in our culture for it to becomes a force against which we must fight, and eternal because it remains true for everyone. that moving into adulthood (particularly adolescence) means in some way accepting what constitutes a conflict between sexuality insofar as it is self-aggrandizing and aggressive and emotional life insofar as it is not -self-aggrandizing and other-centered and in some seems more “pure”. It is of course possible to accept this contradiction, but it is also possible to understand it and be undermined by its existence, and Gabriel is a very clear example of someone who cannot really reconcile the simple physical desire for his beloved. wife, a motive to “reach out and take,” with an equally simple adoration and affection for her in the grace and authenticity of her autonomy, a motive to “step back and in some sense give” ( I read two passages from Portrait, 171, against 99-101). Gabriel is therefore disturbed by what strikes us as terribly strange as his moments of pure and “clownish” “lust”, and