Samantha Valdivia
Section C
December 15, 2014
Accretion of Powdered Debris
In the short story “Eveline,” published in 1914, the main character, Eveline, has a life altering decision to make. She must choose between staying and helping her family or leaving Dublin to go to Buenos Aires with Frank, her lover. While she weighs both options she is sits beside her window during the entirety of this short story. Her struggle to decide is symbolized by dust throughout the novel. Joyce does this in order to associate how Eveline’s is entrapped by her perfunctory lifestyle. By doing this Joyce is strengthening the reader’s understanding of Eveline’s arid, oppressing, and lonely life, while showing how her lack of movement resembles the accumulation …show more content…
She fears that if she leaves her responsibilities will accumulate as quickly as the dust has in her home. As Eveline sits near the window she is “reviewing all its familiar objects which she dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from” (29- 30). This continuous replenishment of dust relates to the rate at which her responsibilities take hold of her because she cannot possibly attend to things all at once because of the difficulty of the work. For example, she “had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work- a hard life” (31). Because the accumulation of dust coincides with the responsibility Eveline must attend to, dust proves how Eveline withstands continuous oppression in her own home because “once a week” she continues to reclean the collected dust. Although some readers may assume caring for her family is a noble action, they must understand that she is a nineteen year olds and her life is at her fingertips. She has her future to plan, and having to act as a mother for a family that she did not start causes much apprehension for someone so young. Therefore, the responsibilities Eveline has taken on in her home acts as an anchor to her hopes and
Section C
December 15, 2014
Accretion of Powdered Debris
In the short story “Eveline,” published in 1914, the main character, Eveline, has a life altering decision to make. She must choose between staying and helping her family or leaving Dublin to go to Buenos Aires with Frank, her lover. While she weighs both options she is sits beside her window during the entirety of this short story. Her struggle to decide is symbolized by dust throughout the novel. Joyce does this in order to associate how Eveline’s is entrapped by her perfunctory lifestyle. By doing this Joyce is strengthening the reader’s understanding of Eveline’s arid, oppressing, and lonely life, while showing how her lack of movement resembles the accumulation …show more content…
She fears that if she leaves her responsibilities will accumulate as quickly as the dust has in her home. As Eveline sits near the window she is “reviewing all its familiar objects which she dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from” (29- 30). This continuous replenishment of dust relates to the rate at which her responsibilities take hold of her because she cannot possibly attend to things all at once because of the difficulty of the work. For example, she “had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work- a hard life” (31). Because the accumulation of dust coincides with the responsibility Eveline must attend to, dust proves how Eveline withstands continuous oppression in her own home because “once a week” she continues to reclean the collected dust. Although some readers may assume caring for her family is a noble action, they must understand that she is a nineteen year olds and her life is at her fingertips. She has her future to plan, and having to act as a mother for a family that she did not start causes much apprehension for someone so young. Therefore, the responsibilities Eveline has taken on in her home acts as an anchor to her hopes and