Compare and Contrast the characters of Gabriel Conroy, and Michaell Furey in "The Dead."I've read the story, and the differences between Michael...

Perhaps one comparison that can be made between Gabriel
Conroy and Michael Furey of James Joyce's short story "The Dead" is that they are both
dead.  While Michael Furey is, of course, literally dead, Gabriel is spiritually dead. 
He suffers from what Joyce termed the Irish paralysis; he cannot act or grow beyond
where he is emotionally.

For instance, when Miss Ivors, who
has read an ariticle that he has written, accuses him of loyalty to the British, Gabriel
tries to avoid the issue; when she suggests that he visit his own country rather than
Belgium and France, and that he practice Gaellic rather than French, Gabriel becomes
nervous and replies that he speaks English.  In another instance, as he prepares his
speech for the evening, he imagines how he can insult Miss Ivors with a phrase, but when
he gives his speech Miss Ivors has departed, and he ends up only pleasing his audience. 
And, after his wife Gretta becomes nostalgic from hearing a song of Mr. D'Arcy that
reminds her of a boy who loved her, Gabriel perceives his wife as lovely and alluring. 
But, when they get home, Gretta cries as he tries to make love to her; consequently,
Gabriel again does nothing.

While Michael Furey was a
passionate young man willing to die for his love [notice the name Furey], Gabriel
realizes that he has no such passion, although he is also a sensitive man as Furey
was. Like the young lover, who was only in Gretta's life for a brief time, Gabriel, too,
is aware that has played but a "poor part" in her
life:

He
watched her while she slept as though he and she had never lived together as man and
wife.

As he contemplates what
has occurred on this holdiay night, he thinks that perhaps
soon

...he
would be sitting in that same drawing-room, dressed in black...the blinds would be drawn
down...His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the
dead.

In his spiritual
paralysis Gabriel thinks "The time had come for him to set out on his journey
westward."  Joyce here symbolizes Gabriel's spiritual death since westward is a journey
toward the dead.  Soon he will literally join Michael Furey in
death.