James Joyce: The Dead - short story review

This is without a doubt the best short story I've ever read, it has everything I like in it: descriptive family gatherings, humor, coziness, tension, anxiety, lust, love, sadness, nostalgia and some bits of magical realism as well. It is the quintessential short story, and the last few sentences are some of the most memorable in the English language.

"His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

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. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. (...) 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." (p. 194)

Rating: 5/5