The narrator tells us a story regarding to a girl, who lives in Dublin. This girl wants to leave the city with her boyfriend  but she can't because she feels still connected to the promise she made to her mother before her mother's dying. The promise is to look after her family. In the short story are told her thoughts, her feelings and her memories. In the end she doesn't leave because she feels like paralysed, she cannot move. It describes the Dubliner's way to behave: they are unable to act.