I want to escape

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I made the decision to write my second essay about the short story The Dead from the Dubliners collection by James Joyce. While reading the short store I found that I personally formed a connection with the idea of not choosing to linger over the past, but to choose a future. A longing for escape is only natural in the face of adversity, and is a common theme that I noticed from The Dead. We go throughout our daily lives in a pattern of habits and rituals. We know what makes us comfortable and what makes us uncomfortable, and a lot of the time, at least in my circumstance, what makes us uncomfortable often gets in the way of our future. Gabriel suggests in The Dead however that even though we get stuck in these ruts, the living can make a choice to free ourselves of our past and live without the burden of our routines. We shouldn’t fear change, but be aware of it and let this awareness affect our daily lives.
In The Dead Gabriel describes a vision of snow as a “general all over Ireland.” The snow covers everything, freezing both those who live and die in stillness. By the end of The Dead however Gabriel reaches the conclusion that perhaps the difference between the living and the dead is the ability to choose a different path, the consciousness of choice that allows us to take an active hand in the making of our future.
Gabriel is saddened by the state of current day Ireland, where he feels that hospitality and humility are undervalued, but by the end of the story he sees that even though the longing for something to be different is still there, he can’t choose to see Ireland’s future in a way that is negative. Our awareness makes all the difference, for it gives the living the ability of choice and the power to change. For ...

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...s fully grown it can easily break the peg holding it into the ground, the animal has been conditioned to resist even trying. It doesn’t look for escape because it doesn’t think that it can. So the elephant does the same thing, over and over, day after day.
Just like elephants, our subconscious forgets what our capabilities actually are. We self-limit ourselves by repeating the same actions that we learned in the past. It’s our job to let our awareness realize our potentential, and then choose to progress from past experiences in our future.
Will it be uncomfortable? Yeah, absolutely. Our brains form habits because they’re safe and reliable and we know what to expect. It’s only by choosing to make different choices that we can expect different results, and that is the promise of living a full life, one that embraces change and looks forward to breaking the mold.

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