"Eveline" is a short story taken from a collection of short story "Dubliners". The protagonist is Eveline, she is 19 years old, she belongs to the working class and she is orphan. The setting of the story is her home in Dublin. The event takes place here because people leaving there seemed to Joyce to be affected by paralysis: an inability to act, in the worst cases to be unable to make decisions because they have not a point of view on matter and situation; Eveline is an example.

In the short story there is 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 has not got a point of view.

The story is organized into 11 sequences.

The structure of the short story shows all of the novelists skills: he perfectly makes the reader understand Eveline's paralysis using stylistic choices. For example in the first sequence, which has got an introductory function: external world is perceived as a menace, a threat because of the use of the word "invade" (taken from the code of war). The perception of the character is, right from the start, as inactive, paralyzed: she does nothing, she sits, she watches, she leans, she was tired: no emotion verbs are used. She is stuck inside her house. Alliteration of "w" contributes to add meaning to it.

The second sequence covers lines from 4 to 21. The function is to tell the reader Eveline's past life. The sequence starts with the description of the external world: inhabited world outside is busy. J. Joyce conveys the idea of the city in a very concrete, minute matter of fact. Eveline seems to live in a very ordinary routine life, where everything is already seen and gone. This explains why her house has got a grey color, differently from red houses, which are new (they broke with habit). Silence of her home is broken by onomatopoeic sounds made by the "footsteps clacking".

The intelligent reader understands that Eveline carries on thinking and she goes back to her past. The repetition of the syntactical expression "used to" underlines her past habits. In addition Joyce underlines the routine like nature of Eveline's existence, with expressions like "Every evening". Evening also creates an alliterative effect. Her memory goes back to her childhood. The introductory "one time" seems to put it very far away, in a distant past.
As the word "new", referred to the red houses, the man from Belfast that bought the field, where she used to play underline the irruption of foreigners in Dublin. Eveline seems to be afraid of it, because they are different and she is devoured from habits.
The sentence "everything changes" stops the rhythm of the narration. It is the only one that has got the simple present.

The third sequence is about her home, a closed, almost claustrophobic place from which she might be swallowed. House is grey, everything seems to be covered with dust, therefore it might seem an adolescent is out of place in such a house. In addition, even time references project her life in the past (mainly verb tenses are simple past and when not past perfect or "used to" constructions, conveying the idea of habits in the past). she perceives her home as a shelter not like a pleasure environment.
Her working class reality does not return her any motivation to go on living her life with hopes and desires as should be the case of an adolescent. Eveline feels at home only among "familiar objects" that does not make her afraid. Habits, routine is what her life is made of: she "had dusted" her house objects "once a week for so many years".
The sense of her routine is conveyed by the alliterative use of the sound "r": "round the room reviewing". Dust becomes the paradigmatic symbol of metaphor for her existence.
Eveline sometimes seems to dream about the possibility to take distances from her situation. 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 "and yet during all those years she had never found out.." That should not be a surprise consider that all she is surrounded by, is either "yellowing" and "broken".
The intelligent reader may soon realize that the short story not only conveys the idea of paralyzed mind living in a shabby world, but he/she immediately perceives the Irish situation where all the admitted icons are connected with religion. Eveline's house is made of walls over which religious images of saints hung like heavy weights. From the structural point of view Joyce uses the transition of the priest to introduce the theme of "voyage". Narration changes because we have free direct style, it follows that the reader may have the feeling that he is listening to the exact words that cross her mind.

Immediately afterwards the next sequence begins and the reader has access to Eveline's mental considerations about the decision she is going to take. Interesting is to notice that thinking about her voyage brings her immediately to consider that at home "she had shelter and food and those whom she know all her life about her". Again she thinks of her past and her present to make sense of the future. This explains the difficulty for her to cut with her past, she does not seem to have any positive feeling about her future life. The new passes through the old, and even worst through what other people think of her.
The petty mentality of gossip seems to interest her more than nourish her expectations. Words like "perhaps" or expressions like "was that wise?" underline she is not sure about her decision. Joyce's symbolic realism can well be seen in the sentence at line 39: " her place would be filled up by advertisement" Here she seems to provide herself in terms of vacancy. She has not at all any self-extreme, she always thinks about people's idea of her in negative terms.
Again the reader can hear her thoughts thanks to indirect style, which underlines she is lazy, not queek and always depressed. She always seems not to miss the place.

The whole fifth sequence underlines the law quality of her existence. There are two semantic choices that highlight the point:
• Hard, very frequent like an adjective
• Regularly is another adverb, which is repeated to us.
Both lexical choices synthesize the message of the sequence: Eveline has an hard life (her father is often drunk, she has to look after her brothers, she has to insist to get money from her father...) and she has always to do the same thing without nobody helping her, it follows that she does not feel protected and even worst "she feels in danger.." (l. 49), to the point of hard-throbbing. She does not at all feel loved like her brothers (l.50-51). Joyce underlines even the position of the women in Irish society, they are not considered as are men. Money is like a ghost: it appears and probably disappears on Saturday night. What's more her father considered her unable to do the shopping (l.59). The choice of Eveline's father's words (l. 60) "she had no head" pin points the low consideration she has inside the family. Also the way Joyce describes the way she goes to buy provisions is to return to the reader of her life in terms of hard relationship.
The sequence symbolically ends highlighting the concept of hardship in Eveline's existence and clearly brings to surface that the idea of leaving home is more a form of escape than a real choice.

The following sequence is about Eveline and Frank relationship. Joyce speaks about "to explore another life" (l.73) like the exploration of a forest, where you don't know what you may find. Even the would-be escape is "by the night boat" (l.75). Grey and darkness still shape her existence. Eveline's memory goes back to the first time she met Frank. Whenever Eveline is well treated, such a behavior displaces her. Frank appears as the romantic man every girl is looking for, as in a dream. He sang love songs to her and she felt "confused" (l.86).
The reason why she likes him is that Frank is different from people who she used to attend: her father, her brothers and so on. As a matter of fact "He had tales of distant countries"(l.87), it means that he travelled a lot and Eveline seems to be fascinated by his story, because it is something new for her, something that she doesn't know. Of course, her father's reaction to their affair is negative ("Of course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him" (l.95-96)) and he says that he "knows these sailor chaps"(l.98): he is maybe afraid of his daughter's possible departure with Frank.

The next sequence starts with the imagine of the evening deepening in the avenue. It reminds the first sequence, in which the evening invade the avenue. The tone is melancholy: she thinks of the future and of his father's feeling. Eveline believes her father would miss her (l. 103) and it paralyses her to leave and she reminds two past events in which her father "Could be very nice" (l.104). To tell the truth his behavior, considered by her as nice, are common for a father. Therefore Eveline finds such justification, in order to persuade herself her life is not so bad.

The eight sequence has got another reference to the introductory one: her paralysis is underlined again by the time running out and the image of Eveline still sat by the window. In addition she is still "leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne" : she doesn't act, she still carries on watching outside. Suddenly she thinks of her mother's promise: "her promise to keep the home together as long as she could". It follows that Eveline is more and more doubtful about leaving or not. It would be as a failed promise. But a memory of her mother's last night makes her and the reader understand of his father's narrow-mindedness: he is paralyzed as Eveline, insomuch as he rails at some organ-player saying: "Damned Italians! Coming over here". He cannot bear the difference. The tone of the flash-back is dark and it is marked by some words such as close, dark and melancholy in order to highlight the sadness of her mother's death.

The ninth sequence is linked to the previous one by the pitiful vision of Eveline's mother: she is seen as a victim (Joyce uses the word "sacrifices") of that "life of commonplace": habits made her crazy. Eveline reminds her words "Derevaun Seraun" (l.124), which mean "the end of song is madness". These make her understand that she has to change her life, she has to escape and Frank would save her. She feels the right to be happy. Therefore Frank is seen as the savior. In the sequence there are many words that link to the common field of madness: craziness, foolish and derevaun seraun. What's more the use of exclamations such as "Escape!" (l. 125) and short sentences speed the narration rhythm as if Eveline is in a hurry to leave and to save her.

In the tenth sequence Eveline is in the station, she is going to leave. Nevertheless she is still insecure: she doesn't precisely listen to Frank's words: "saying something about the passage over and over again" (l. 132) and she cannot answer. In addition she appeals to God to show "her duty" and she feels ill: her physical perturbation is a symptom of her inner on: "she felt her cheek pale and cold" (l.136), "Her distress awoke a nausea in her body..."(l. 142). Her insecurity is also highlighted by the interrogative question: "could she still draw back after all he had done for her?" (l.140).

The last sequence opens with a sound of a bell that clanged upon her heart. The bell awake her: it is the symbol of her decision of going back. She thinks that Frank would drown her, it means that if she leaves she will feel lost in a reality that she doesn't know. Therefore she decides to return at home. This is the unique sequence in which Eveline acts, nevertheless she acts not to change her situation, but to come back to paralysis and habits.