What is the relationship between the living and the dead in the story? How does Gabriel’s speech relate to his realization at the end of the story?
Throughout the story, he living think about the dead constantly. Gabriel wants the dead to remain in the past. He gives the speech to remind everyone that reminiscing is not what they should do. After thinking about Michael Fuery’s death, Gabriel starts to feel somber. In the end, he realizes that once he is dead, the living will forget about him just like he insists they forget about all the deceased.
Your ideas are to the point. He always tries to escape from past, that is one of the reason he does not want to talk or think about dead people. With his dad being dead he does not talk about him even for a sentence in his speech or throughout the story he does not points t him. He always tries to keep things moving, he escapes the past and he scares from the present. That is one of the reason that in his speech he tried to tell people that traditions are from the past so let it be in the past,