“The Dead” is the final and most famous story of the collection, making up roughly one third of the entire collection’s text. At 15,952 words, the story is long enough to be considered a novella and is sometimes published in stand-alone editions. The story takes place during and after a party organized by two elderly sisters for the Christian feast of Epiphany, which takes place on the 6th of January, twelve days after Christmas. The main character is Gabriel Conroy, a university professor and nephew to the two sisters who arrives late and expected to give a speech at dinner. Conroy is well respected by nearly everyone at the party but comes into conflict over Irish culture and nationalism with one woman who is colleague and a friend of his own wife. After the party, Conroy struggles to come to grips with learning about an important incident from his wife’s past that she had kept secret from him throughout their entire relationship.
Due to the length of “The Dead,” the full text has not been included for a task in this collection. The full text is available online. There is also an excellent 1987 film adaptation that is available to watch on YouTube that might be interesting for students who have read the story to watch.
To start out with, both a "Task A" (literature-based) and "Task B" (non fiction-based) writing task has been included based on "The Dead." You can try both here:
Writing Task: A Sense of Meaning in Life
The next reading task is based on fragments from a scientific article called “Social Media’s Role in Romantic Partners’ Retroactive Jealousy: Social Comparison, Uncertainty, and Information Seeking.” In “The Dead,” the main character struggles with feelings of intense jealousy after learning about a passionate romance that his wife had in her youth with a young man who risked death (and did eventually die) to see her while he was seriously ill. Nowadays, jealousy about past romances is still something that many people struggle with, especially since social media might provide someone with images and videos from their partner’s previous relationships.
Reading Task: Retroactive Jealousy