1. Eveline has to make a choice. Her dilemma is to decide whether to stay at home taking care of the house has she promised to her mother with her father abusing of her or whether to run away with her love Frank and LIVE.

2. She desires to leave because she thinks Frank can give her love and happiness and escaping is the only way to start living. She doesn’t want to waste her life and make a lot of sacrifices and end up getting crazy as her mom did. On the other side though she wants to stay because her dad is getting old and she promised to her mother that she would have taken care of the house and the family until she could. Moreover, at home, “she had shelter and food; she had those whom had known all her life about her”

3. Eveline is facing her dilemma at only 19. She has never had an easy life: her father was violent to her “ she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence”; “she had nobody to protect her”; her mom died of craziness and she had to take care of her brothers Harry and Ernest; her father wouldn’t trust her and he wouldn’t give money to her because he thought she would waste them; she didn’t have a prestigious job and people wouldn’t respect her “Miss Gavan had an edge on her”

4. Miss Gavan didn’t really like her or she had something against her.

5. Eveline seems to be one of those adolescence who after her mother’s dead has to take care of her little children and be the “mom”. She is that kind of girl who didn’t really enjoy her life but she’s always been imprisoned in a certain way and under her father’s control. She seems sad and unsatisfied, incapable to act, paralyzed. As a matter of fact even thug she loves Frank and she thinks that running away is the right choice, she changes her mind and she doesn’t escape.
Frank doesn’t seem to have any relevance in the story. He is “ very kind, manly, open-hearted” but however he’s not capable to convince Eveline to run away with him.
Eve line’s father is a grumpy man who to be the best father but fails. He thinks that with violence he can give his children the best education. However he’s a man who has suffered a lot, he lost his wife and he was probably trying to hide his pain. As a matter of fact he could be very nice (“Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire”).


6. Since the very beginning the story goes on in a chronological order. The first two paragraphs are dedicated to the past, Eveline’s childhood to be more specific, and the third one is about her present, her job, pros and cons of the choice she will be making. Then after a little flashback ( the fourth paragraph), the story keeps going on in a very ordered and specific way. Frank’s character is presented in the fifth paragraph and again in paragraph six Eveline’s dilemma is presented. The conclusion (paragraph seven) describes Eveline’s choice.

7. “A maze of distress” could be a labyrinth of agony and pain. Eveline is frustrated because she doesn’t know what to do, which one is the right choice? Run away or stay? Only God can tell her. As well as in a labyrinth when you get to a dead point, you don’t know how to get back and you start panic, Eveline gets to the point and she has to make a decision but she’s insecure, unable to act and even though she’ll hurts Frank she’ll make the easier choice.

8-9. It is an interior monologue, something Eveline is asking herself. Other examples can be found in the following sentences:
“What would they say in the Stores when they found out she had run away with a fellow?”
“Was that wise?”
“Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her”.
“No!no!no! It was impossible”

10. Joyce uses a third person omniscient narrator who is not visible in the story. As a matter of fact, what the narrator thinks is well hidden behind the characters’ point of view.