“The Dead” was the title of one of James Joyce’s most famous short stories: http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/958/

This story:

Now that I have a large number of characters and the town model is growing, I want to start developing characters more.  The literary characters have been primarily developing as caricatures of their historical personalities, but I’d like some of the other recurring characters around down to have personalities of their own as well.  I think this has already started to happen with the two Guards, Bert and Ernie.