When the redeemed observe the faintly falling snow through the universe, their minds ought to turn to the Maker of both snow and universe, the One who crafts each and every snowflake individually, separately, uniquely. A great torrent of white snow settling on a blemished creation ought to remind us all of Him who delights in washing us clean – whiter than snow, spotless (Psalm 51:7). Whereas the world sees cosmic indifference and judgement in a snowfall, we as Christians should see grace upon grace.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight… Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. 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.”

-James Joyce, The Dead

Thus ends The Dead, Joyce’s finest short story.

Part Christmas story, part ghost story, part lament against Lady Ireland, The Dead has become a mighty footing in the cathedral that is Irish literature. All these many threads – the warmth of a Christmas dinner, tense political conversations, a dawning existential crisis, and old haunts – are realized in the subtle, haunting beauty of the story’s final breath.

The focus of the story is Gabriel Conroy, a well-educated man from Dublin, Ireland, who is aching for life and status abroad. Gabriel pines for an existence far from Ireland and all that she has, in his mind, come to represent – endless war and death, an empty Catholicism, and a cultural heritage about as lively as still water. The greater part of the story’s drama unfolds during a Christmas party in Dublin held by Gabriel’s two aunts, Julia and Kate.

Upon leaving the party, Gabriel and his wife Gretta make their way in the early morning hours to their hotel room across town. All the while, as the cold snow is falling gently, Gabriel’s heart is burning within him. A vision of his wife upon the staircase from earlier that night, enveloped in shadow and distant music, has stirred something in his heart. However, once Gabriel and Gretta enter their hotel room, the moment seems to have faded.

“Gretta dear, what are you thinking about?”, Gabriel asks once they are alone, the snow still gently falling just beyond their hotel window. On the bed, ebbing in and out of a sleepy melancholy, Gretta reveals to her husband Gabriel that the night’s festivities – one song in particular – roused from her past a ghost she had long since thought to be dead and buried. The memory of a young man named Michael Furey, deep from within Gretta’s past, has again entered her thoughts.

“He is dead”, Gretta said at length. “He died when he was only seventeen. Isn’t it a terrible thing to die so young as that? I think he died for me.”

Overcome by melancholy or exhaustion or both, Gretta falls asleep on the bed. Gabriel, pierced by the haunting suggestion that he may not, after all, know his wife as intimately as he suspected, walks over to the shadowy window and observes an equally haunting sight – “the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

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