The Dead- A Metaphor

"The coffin is to remind them of their last end."

In this part of The Dead, by James Joyce, Aunt Kate and Mary Jane are explaining to Mr. Browne a ritual of monks: every night when the go to bed, they sleep in coffins to "make up for the sins committed by all the sinners in the outside world." The vehicle in this case in the last end and it is carrying the tenor, or the coffin. This metaphor is significant to the story because the coffin is foreshadowing a death that the readers learns about in the end.