In "The Dead," Joyce paints a bleak picture of wintry Dublin through his use of adjectives and descriptive phrases.
He describes a "dark central plain" and "treeless hills." Furthermore, the churchyard is "lonely." The thorns are "barren." These descriptions create a feeling of sadness and bleakness in the reader.
The snow falls upon "all the living and the dead." The all-encompassing snow, coupled with the description of the graveyard, makes for a bleak picture of Dublin in the winter.
