Eveline
Eviline is unlike any other love story. Yes it is about young love and the hardships the couple were faced with, but the out come is very different. Eveline, who has already been courted by Frank, is planning on marrying him and "to live with him in Buenos Ares"(5). Or has she really made up her mind? When she meets him at the station and they are getting ready to board the ship, all of the sudden Eveline changes her mind and decides that she cannot go with Frank. "He would drown her" in "all the seas of the world"(7) if she was to leave everything that she has known. But Eveline's rejection of not just a rejection of love, but also a rejection of a new life and a way to escape the hard life she has already come to accept. Water is used as a practical means of escape; it also symbolized rejuvenation and emotional vitality. It is used to show everything that Eveline looses through her fear and lack of courage. By not plunging into the "seas of the world that tumbled about her heart"(7), Eveline abandons the thoughts of escape, life and love for the past, duty, and death.
Moving eastward in "Eveline" is in relation with new life. But for Eveline, sailing eastward with Frank is as much of an escape as a promise of something better. From the beginning of the story, she is submissive and tired and tends to remember old neighbors, like "the Waters" who have moved east "to England"(4). She looks forward to "going away like the others"(4). She openly admits that she will not be missed at her job; and at nineteen, without the protection of her older brothers, she is beginning to feel "herself in danger of her father's violence"(4). Her father confiscates what little money she earns and expects the world in ret...
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...e had the right to happiness"(6). Yet she is uncertain that she will ever fall in love with him.
The world of desire, longing, fulfillment, and heartbreak are tossed about in "the seas that tumbled about her heart"(7) and this unfamiliar world of vitality and power is as terrifying to Eveline as the reality of traveling halfway around the world. She might drown, true, but she might even learn how to swim. But, deciding against "testing the waters" Eveline subjects herself to a life without any fulfillment at all. On the way from childhood to adulthood, Eveline feels that the altering experience will "drown" her old self and she is unable to imagine a new self emerging out of the waves.
Joyce, James. "Eveline" Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizebeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2004. 3-6
“The Road Not Taken.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan et al. 8th ed.
"Unit 2: Reading & Writing About Short Fiction." ENGL200: Composition and Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 49-219. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
In the book The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley, the book is a twist to what readers would expect. In the story, a girl name Alette is chosen for a certain mission and she goes in not knowing what to expect. Alette goes on these journey and face with challenges that she must overcome, but it is more about the destination then than the journey itself. One of the important theme throughout the book is transformation.
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X. Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002.
"Eveline" is the story of a young teenager facing a dilemma where she has to choose between living with her father or escaping with Frank, a sailor which she has been courting for some time. The story is one of fifteen stories written by James Joyce in a collection called "Dubliners". These stories follow a certain pattern that Joyce uses to express his ideas: "Joyce's focus in Dubliners is almost exclusively on the middle-class Catholics known to himself and his family"(the Gale Group). Joyce's early life, family background, and his catholic background appear in the way he writes these stories. "Where Joyce usually relates his stories to events in his life, there are some stories which are actually events that took place in his life" (Joyce, Stanislaus). James Joyce in his letter to Grant Richard writes:
2. Attridge, Derek. The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth Mahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2002. 977-986
Roberts, Edgar V., Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th Compact Edition, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008, print
In the story, “The Bride comes to Yellow Sky”, Potter reluctantly overcame his fear of what others were going to say about him bringing his new wife to Yellow Sky with him. On the other hand, Eveline was also close to being able to live her life, but she thought about the sake of her mother’s request to take care of her father and brother while she is dead. She knew that this would conclude to her not wanting to leave her family behind. Though both of them both had the same perspective about how others perceived them, Eveline saw what others were doing and thought she wanted to do it also. She saw that around her age, her peers were running off to get married and she knew that Jack would be the perfect person for her to marry and start a family with. She decided to go against the grain as Potter did, except, she did not run off with her boyfriend to another country. In today’s world, many people do not take control over their own life. Many are influenced by their peers, family members, and their traditions and it scares them not to want to live for themselves. Instead of them following the path of others, they did what made them happy, and that is the most important thing of life: being
James Joyce’s Eveline touches on themes of helplessness, expectation and the gender roles present in an impoverished Irish family during its narrative. The narrative focuses on the perspective of Eveline the dutiful daughter of a violent widower. She is the eldest daughter and has tried to follow the promise that she gave her mother when she was on her death bed. She sees it as her duty to keep her family together since her mother’s death. She feels that she has to fill in her mother’s roles while still continuing to be a daughter. She is melancholic about how her town seems to be changing even though her life seems to be at a standstill. She knows that everything changes. She and her siblings are becoming older, as is her father, and she
“Escape! She must escape!” but why she did not (Meyer 515). James Joyce title character in “Eveline” had all the reason in the world to escape her odd life and explore a new life. She fears making the change in her life by moving to Buenos Aires with her boyfriend Frank. Eveline becomes the main provider for her dysfunctional family after her mother’s death and has to make the biggest decision of her life, to stay or runaway. The guilt that Eveline will feel forced her to stay in her trap awful life. James illustrates in the short story “Eveline”, that his character didn’t leave her gloomy life because of two reasons, Eveline promised her mother to care for the family and she doesn’t know or love Frank enough to leave.
The short story, “Eveline” by James Joyce, is about two people deciding what to do with their lives. Frank, a man who lives Buenos Ayres and is in love with Eveline. Eveline is from Ireland and has grown up poor with an abusive father. Eveline had to make a choice, stay in Ireland and live with her father or start a new life and move to Buenos Ayres with Frank. The decision is much more difficult than she anticipated. In the end, Eveline decides to stay in Ireland with her father because there are too many negative factors for her to leave him behind.
In the beginning of the short story, Eveline, “look[ing] around the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she dusted once a week for many years” exemplified how she was too busy to tend to most of the household chores because she is occupied managing and taking care of others (Joyce, par. 1). Eveline ponders on what life would be like to never again see those familiar objects. She has become one of the many products in her home to never change. Eveline now has the responsibilities that her mother once had but, is afraid that she too might live a sad life and die lonely if she stays in Dublin. Eveline sits in the window thinking about her childhood with “her nostrils [filling with] the odor of dusty cretonne” (par. 2). The dust symbolizes
Eve’s life with Pierre is avoidance of their responsibility in the world. Eve is forced to realize that the world exist outside their dark room. Eve’s father, M. Darbedat visits every Thursday to visit, and is a weekly reminder of such. Then as her father leaves the sunlight shines through the closed blinds of the living room. She opens the window and watches her father walk out, and resents that “a little part of their life had escaped from the closed room and was being dragged through the streets, in the sun, among the people”. (30) Sh...
he story Eveline is by James Joyce. It is about a girl named Eveline who must make a decision that will impact her life in either a positive or negative way. Eveline is a sympathetic character because she has an abusive father, she is always unhappy, and she does not seem to like the way her life is. Her life is hard because she must go to work and take care of the house and her siblings. These are reasons why I feel that Eveline is a sympathetic character.