Sequences Analysis of Eveline

Write the analysis answering these questions.

•-          How many sequences are there in Eveline?

•-          What is their function?

•-          What is the relationship between the sequences?

•-          Narrative techniques

Eveline is a short story belonging to Dubliners. In James Joyce's idea Dubliners as a collection had the function to write a chapter of the moral history of his Country. Dublin represented The centre of paralysis of the novel (both from the physical and from the metaphorical point of view).

The stories organized into two main sections, or sequences. The first one is made up by nine paragraphs, while the second one counts 2 paragraphs.

The protagonist is Eveline. She is an adolescent. The short story is indeed part of the section of Dubliners devoted to adolescence.

Right from the start the protagonist, a girl belonging to the working class, is looking at the outside world from her house. She perceives external reality as a threat. As the intelligent reader can see      "The evening invaded the avenue". The verb " to invade" is taken from the semantic field of fight. Looking outside she remembers her past and , more precisely, she remembers about a field in which she played with other children. But "that was a long time ago" and now everything has changed. The children she played with  grew up and went away from there; now it's her turn : " now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home".

The second paragraph deals with the emotional crisis born in Eveline when she thought about her departure and when she looked around the room of the house in which she had been living for a long time. Reviewing all the familiar objects around the room brings her to question herself again about the reasons for leaving.

They are expressed in the third paragraph : she will leave her home for Buenos Ayres , where she will marry Frank and live with him. Going there in Buenos Ayres means also leave her job; she is not really sad at the idea of doing that. As the intelligent reader can imagine, she is not happy or satisfied by the life she is living. The sentence in line 45 proves that thought : " it would not be like that".

The fourth paragraph goes on expressing others reason for which Eveline wanted to leave her house: she does not feel protected by any member of her family, there are some money problems and she had to do an hard work in the house. But her life will change with Frank, whose description can be founded in the fifth paragraph.

 In the following paragraph Eveline , looking outside at the avenue remembers the few times her father had been nice to her. The intelligent reader can observe that again, before her memories there is the expression " The evening deepened in the avenue", which recalls the opening expression " the evening invade the avenue". The only difference is the verb used.

All that said so far make the reader ask itself why she is so hesitant to leave a life that cannot satisfy her. Te answer can e found in the seventh paragraph : the idea of leaving scares her because she had promised to her mother dieing that she will keep the home together.

In the last paragraph of the first part Eveline takes the last decision: she wants to live, to live happily. It's her right. Frank, and so love, would save her.

In the second part the setting has changed. Now the character is in the port of Dublin, waiting to leave. She thinks again at the happier life Frank could offer her. But he considers the situation impossible and went off of the boat. She has decided to not follow him.

Narrative techniques used by J. Joyce in the short story are:

•-          the interior monologue ( ex. Lines 7-18)

•-          the stream of consciousness ( ex. Lines 33-41)

•-          the narration does not follow any chronological time; the time is a simultaneous one

•-          the settings change and move from external ones to inner ones, in particular the reader moves from the external setting represented by the avenue during the evening first to Eveline's past activities ( lines 7-17), then to her opinions about her family.