The beginning of the short story mostly revolves around the events of the party, a party so grand everyone and their mother attends as “it was always a great affair” but Joyce wants the audience to see that this event and these people aren’t particularly exciting. In fact, the characters are really just living in a “grey impalpable world”. They’re not really living, not the way Michael Furey did, he was able to “pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion”. Throughout the story the audience can sense the monotony of the world these characters live in. They have no real desire behind their actions, everything they do is simply because that’s how it’s always been. Joyce emphasizes that living passionless as the characters do is no different than being dead, that’s why the story is titled “The Dead”. She uses a lot of repetition and characterization to maintain this sort of mundane world. A good example is Freddy as it states, “they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed” & “Freddy Malins always came late”. Throughout the story Freddy remains an aloof alcoholic and its terms like “always” that really stress that Freddy will never change, and this applies to almost all of the characters. Joyce even repeats certain phrases such as in the quotes, “rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye” & “began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye”. This “backwards and forwards” that’s repeated really creates this dull loop. And the story on multiple occasions repeats “snow” which seems to be a symbol of death. Towards the end she writes, “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.” The statements, snow is “general” & fall “upon the living and the dead” further highlights Joyce’s claim that the way these people are living is no different from the dead.
The relationship between the living and the dead is shown throughout the whole story. As you said, there are many repeated tasks that the characters do which portray their lives as mundane. The characters don’t change, and their actions don’t change. They all gather in one place to do the same thing each time. Gabriel himself said that he was bored of Ireland and ventured west to fulfill his lifeless soul. Just like the title “The Dead”, the live characters in the story fit into the metaphor of dead souls. The actually dead people are brought into the story sometimes as well – Gabriel’s mother and Michael Furey. These dead people of the past seem to influence the living people more than the present time and current events. Gabriel does not even realize he was essentially soulless, until he heard the story of Michael Furey who was a passionate lover. Gabriel pondered upon his own death after hearing the story and realized if he does not change and live now, he will regret it when he faces a sudden death.
You made a very good point when you said “the characters are really just living in a “grey impalpable world”. They’re not physically dead but they carry on with their lives without any meaning and purpose to their lives. Living without passion and purpose makes a person no different from a corpse, since the dead don’t do anything at all which is essentially the same as living meaningless. The snow being a metaphor with death was also a good point. Snow and winter signifies the death of nature in certain areas and it could also signify the dead lives in the party.