Uluslararası Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi The Journal of International Social Research Cilt: 10 Sayı: 52 Volume: 10 Issue: 52 Ekim 2017 October 2017 www.sosyalarastirmalar.com Issn: 1307-9581 Doi Number: http://dx.doi.org/10.17719/jisr.2017.1872 VOICES IN JAMES JOYCE’S “THE DEAD”: A BAKHTINIAN READING Mehmet Akif BALKAYA • Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine James Joyce’s “the Dead” in Dubliners through the perspective of Bakhtinian heteroglossia, polyphony, and dialogism. The text includes representation of differences of culture, ideology and language through its characters. Joyce’s “the Dead” highlights Gabriel’s realizing his self through his dialogues and relations to other characters, whose ideologies, behaviours, culture and ways of speech impress Gabriel. It will be put forth that James Joyce does not control or dominate over the characters’ voices, allowing for and giving place to heteroglossia in his short story “the Dead”. Also, it will be propounded that the characters have their own worldviews and ideologies which constitute dialogism through their communication and interaction with one another without being finalized by the author or narrator. At the end of this paper, it will be concluded that social, cultural and historical backgrounds of each character are revealed and they are not mingled or controlled by the narrator. Therefore, Bakhtin’s terms: heteroglossia, dialogism, polyphony and unfinalization are applied to James Joyce’s “the Dead”. Keywords: Dialogism, Polyphony, Dubliners, James Joyce, Ideology. Introduction Joyce’s Dubliners, published in 1914, consists of 15 short stories among which “The Dead” was the last one concerning the events taking place in Gabriel Conroy’s aunts “Misses Morkan’s annual dance” (Joyce, 1993: 127) 1 . “A chorus of voices [are] invited” (143) to the party, among whom are Gabriel Conroy, Kate and Julia Morkan’s favourite nephew and Mary Jane’s cousin, Gabriel’s wife Gretta, Mr Bartel D’Arcy, a tenor singing “the Lass of Aughrim” in the party, Gabriel’s Irish nationalist friend Miss Molly Ivors, Freddy Malins, who has a drinking problem; also, there are some dead characters about whom the aunts, Gabriel and Gretta talk: Gabriel’s grandfather Patrick Morkan, Julia and Kate’s brother Pat Morkan, Gabriel’s mother Ellen Morkan, and Gretta’s dead love Michael Furey, who aimed to study music but died at an early age. Almost all characters are from Irish middle class families and “though [Aunt Morkans’] life was modest, they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout...” (128); the party is a gathering of various people from different social backgrounds; therefore, the story has many voices to present heteroglossia, representing different social groups, ideologies, and worldviews. Heteroglossia is the stratification of language, which means many-voicedness to Bakhtin since various ideologies, worldviews, social classes, groups, professions and many others shape and stratify language at any time and place. As Joyce has put it in the story, “It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too” (128). However, these voices are not dominated by the limited-third-person-narrator. Each character has his/her own conscious, which communicates without exercising power over the other. In this sense, Joyce succeeds in establishing a polyphonic work. 1. The Polyphonic Structure of the Story In a polyphonic novel the voices of conscious characters “are not merged in the unity of the event” (Bakhtin, 1984: 6), and such a novel presents equal rights for each character together with his/her own world. That is to say, in a polyphonic novel, the author does not control or dominate over the characters’ • Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Science and Letters, Aksaray University makif.balkaya@hotmail.co.uk (This paper is a revised and extended version of the study, presented at the 9th IDEA Conference, held at İnönü University, 15 – 17 April 2015.) 1 Hereafter page numbers without a writer’s name indicate James Joyce’s Dubliners (1993, first pub. 1914) Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd.