Eveline

Eveline is a story taken from Dubliners , a collection of fifteen stories written by James Joyce. In his 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 story deals with an adolescent, Eveline and it is indeed part of the section of Dubliners devoted to adolescence.

The story is dived in two parts.

The first part counts 9 sequences. The first one is the introduction, in which the writer presents his main character, Eveline and he describes her as sitting at the window ,remembering her past which is completely different from her present. But everything changed and she has also to go away like people who belonged to her past did. 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. Right from the start, thanking the use of verbs tenses ( simple past, past progressive, past perfect and " used to") the intelligent reader can understand that Eveline does not live; she is always thinking to her past, she refers to it because he feels reassured by what she knows and scared by what she does not know; that's why she is a person who does not act, always insecure and hesitant.

The second paragraph starts with an exclamation " Home!". The syntactical choice aim is to express 

Eveline feelings. She looks at all the familiar objects around her and at the dust. When J.Joyce

Conveys the idea of her home he refers to objects and works she had been doing for years. Her life

 was repetitive and suffocating, as the suggest image of the dust, which refers also to death.

The narrator then, refers to a picture represented one of her father's friends who went to Melbourne.

With this kind of piece of information the narrator introduces the topic of the voyage.

It is only in the fourth paragraph that the reader went to know the reason for which Eveline is thinking to leave everything; she is in love with a man, Frank and above all she is not satisfied of her present life. In this paragraph the protagonist thinks at the preset time, but not at her own present. She thinks about the other people present. She is also influenced by what they think about her and about what she seemed going to do.

In the fifth paragraph the reader can perceive Eveline's feelings. She does not feel protected by anyone of her family. She feels alone, especially after the death of some people who were important for her.

Also the money became a problem and one of the reasons of the discussions with her father. This is the topic of the sixth paragraph, in which the reader can catch some information about the works Eveline did. But she is not satisfied by this life, she is not happy. That's why she wants to leave all that. She wants to go away and the voyage she was going to do is a metaphor for the choice of acting, of doing something to change a bad situation.

In the following paragraph the writer describes the man she loves , the way they first meet, the way they spend time together. But her father does not want her to meet Frank. That's why she is constrained to meet her lover secretly.

Her father represents a problem for her relationship, but, by contrast, she remembers the really few times he has been kind to her. Frank represents the ideal man, who act, who does everything he can to obtain what he really want.

In the ninth paragraph the reader really understands why, even she is not happy about her life, she never tried to escape it: she promised her mother dieing she will keep the home together.

The last paragraph shows her taking the fatal decision: she will go away with Frank. He will save her by an unhappy life. Love will save her.

The second part of the short story describes the two lovers waiting for the ship going to Buenos Ayres. But, unexpectedly when the ship was going to leave the port, Eveline went down, ignoring Frank calling her.

 She had not been able to escape a life she didn't love for something she did not know. Eveline is the paradigm of the human being paralysis. When she had to take a decision she was paralysed; she wasn't able to take a decision because she hadn't got a point of view on things, she hadn't a perspective about what she had to do. Frank was completely different; as every human being he was certainly afraid about what he did know / as could be the future) and reassured about what he know ( as the past), but he had been able to take a decision, to cope to obtain what he want.