A terrible thing which happens to us in life challenges us to overcome or to be spiritually dead. To be spiritually dead means people are unable to resolve that trouble and let it go. They make it become a central event in their life and can’t forget or forgive by anyway. It is difficult to heal their injury because it is locked into the past. For example, when a child is abandoned, his spirit which will be injured makes him hate his natural parents and also refuse the love of anyone for him. “The Dead” is one of the famous stories of James Joyce about spiritually dead. It takes place on the religious feast of Epiphany, at the holiday party of Julia and Kate Morkan, the spinster aunts of Gabriel Conroy, who is the main character. Besides Gabriel’s feelings about the love for his wife Gretta, the story also expresses the spiritual death of Lily, Mr. Browne and Johnny the horse. Lily, who is the first character, we will look at as one of the spiritually dead. Lily is a maid in Morkan’s house. At the Christmas party, when she takes gentlemen’s coats to the pantry, she encounters Gabriel. He does small talk with her. Gabriel asks her whether she still goes to school and her marriage is coming up. He’s shocked to hear her answer which is “great bitterness”: “The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you.” That means the only thing all men want to do is full sweet-talk girls in order to get sex out of them. Somebody seduced her, had sex with her and then dumped her, so she is prejudiced about men. She judges from one man to an entire sex. She doesn’t believe in men anymore, and she has no generous feeling for them. Although she forgives and goes on with her life, Lily’s empty spirit now makes some changes of her exterior life. Before she had no mistakes in the orders, did well her job and never talked back to her mistresses. Now Aunt Kate can’t depend on Lily anymore. Aunt Kate said: “I’m sure I don’t know what has come over her lately. She’s not the girl she was at all.” Aunt Kate has no idea what has happened to her. Lily might lose her job if she doesn’t come out of it soon. Mr. Browne, who is the guest at the party, has the spiritual death. When people banquet at Morkan’s Christmas party, Miss Jane starts discussion the old opera. Mr. Browne lists the old time opera singers. He proudly said: “Those were the days, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin.” He means the music in Dublin today is junk. He describes three beautiful pictures of the great days of music. First, the peanut gallery, the cheapest seats in house, was full of the enthusiastic young men every night for music. Even the poorest also moved by beauty of music. Today, the opera house is not full. Second, in former times, the tenor encored five times to hit a high C. It’s unbelievable to Mr. Browne. In the third picture, Mr. Browne is also interested in taking prima donna to her hotel by the carriage which the extremely devotional gallery boys pulled, not the horses. For Mr. Browne’s point of view, the reason why they never play the grand