The Drowning...a more appropriate title?

Joyce's "The Dead" finishes a set of short stories that I will never forget.  Yet, I can't help but feel the people in the story were wrongly labeled. They may be "dead" on the inside, or intellectually, or even their ambition is dead, but I feel like they all have the ability to rise from this "death" especially Gabriel.  Dr. Reed mentioned that Gabriel may well be an interpretation of Joyce if he had stayed in Ireland and not left his "fatherland, holy father, and family."  I think Joyce wants the reader to think that the characters are dead and unable to fully realize themselves because of the choices they made, but if you look at Gabriel, he has myriad choices to make just in the story itself.  If he had changed just a few of these decisions he may well have begun to surface from "drowning."  Still, I believe he didn't because of his untamable emotions and desires at the end of the story.  They draw him back under the surface as he lusts for someone who is never thinking of him.