The structure of the short story shows all the novelist's intentions. Joyce's style makes the reader aware of Eveline's paralysis using suitable stylistic choices, for example the description of the external world. The external world is perceived as a menace or a threat because of the use of the verb ”invade“ which belongs to the semantic field of war. The perception of Eveline is, right from the start, paralyzed as the environment that surrounds her; for this reason she will never be able to make decisions. She does nothing, she is tired so she is fixed in her room. Her working class reality does not return her any motivations to go on living her life with hopes and desires as should be the case of an adolescent and in addition the threatening figure of a violent and often drunk father makes her everyday even shabbier.

Eveline sometimes seems to dream about the possibility to take distances from her situation, an example could be the voyage with Frank. The naïve reader may expect Eveline to be able to dream but that is an illusion because her mind and fantasy are inhabited by curious questions. That should not be a surprise considered that everything she is surrounding by is either ”yellowing“ or ”broken“.

Joyce adopts a third person omniscient narrator that steps into the mind of the character, that is the narrator adopts the character's point of view to convey the idea of a character who hasn't got a point of view. The memory of the past, the ”familiar objects“, the violent father and the environment in which she lives: characterize Eveline. Even if she thinks that she wants to go, actually she has no intentions to go. Actions, hopes and expectations remain fantasy dreams to inhabit the girl's mind and her continuous questioning reality.