Comparing Dubliners to the Lighthouse In Dubliners and the Lighthouse, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf explore the depressing results of lives devoid of growth or meaning compared to those who they dare to live their lives despite all the struggles and adversities. Joyce and Woolf are both concerned with the meaninglessness of stagnant lives, the former operating in Ireland before the First World War, the latter in England during and after the war. “The Dead” and To the Lighthouse both reveal the desperation of lives that occupy but do not fill the brief space of time between birth and inevitable death. With "The Dead," Joyce brings his lament for Ireland's plight to its depressing yet strangely peaceful aspect. conclusion. Like all previous Dubliners stories, "The Dead" offers the reader a strong dose of the social depravity of an Ireland torn by internal war. Everyone in the story seems so caught up in remembering the faded glory of the past that the living have become even more stagnant and perished than the dead themselves. Aunt Giulia first appears like a withered flower: "her hair... was grey; and grey, too, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. ...[She] had the appearance of a woman who did not He knew where she had gone." was or where he was going" (187-188). This initial description also seems to be of a near or even past death. Although she sings more beautifully than she ever has (202-203), she seems more prepared for his funeral than “Arrayed for the Bridal.” She wrote and, for every Christmas party she hosted, performed this song about a wedding, yet she never married or had children in her life, although intermittently beautiful while it lasted , will soon end up in obscurity, fruitless, childless, "wasted", as its... middle of paper... or lasting meaning What the late heroes of the past had, and zombie characters generally lack of present, is the awareness that the formation and maintenance of emotional bonds between human beings is the only meaningful undertaking of the human spirit and the only useful endeavor of human life going through the motions of an emotionless society they waste their lives as slowly and painfully as their bodies wear out. For them, the only way to truly live their life is to follow the feeling, the passion of the soul. Works Cited: Benstock, Bernard. Critical essays on James Joyce. G. K. Hall & Co. Boston, Massachusetts: 1985. Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Washington Square Press, 1998. Woolf, Virginia. At the lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1989.