Eveline Casual Analysis

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Jeleigha Ritter DATE \@ "MMMM d, y" February 21, 2015 Casual Analysis Essay “Eveline” by James Joyce Why didn't Eveline leave? Thats the big question here. Well, I can think of several reasons why she stayed and why she could’ve left. But I’d like to focus on the reasons that she could've left. I think that she could've left for three reasons; Her childhood was not good, her father was an alcoholic and treated both Eveline and her mother with disrespect and cruelty, as well as her being forced to take care of the family when her mother died. My first reason that Eveline could've left was because of her terrible childhood. In the story Eveline is described as poor and probably does not have a very comfortable life. Eveline's struggle for money is constantly mentioned in the story. There are very specific details that show how miserable her life is. For example, "Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably” (Paragraph 5, line 11). Her father would never give her money so she always gave all of her money and Harry sent what he could as well just to help. Her father said she used to squander the money and that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets. In the end, he would give her the money because he wanted Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out of their home and try to buy food quickly. Eveline worked to keep the house together, as she had promised her mother and to keep the kids in school. In the text it states, “It was hard work — a hard life — but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.” (Paragraph 5, line 17) My second reason that Eveline could've left was because her father was an alcoholic and because he treated both Eveline and her mother with disrespect and cruelty. Because Eveline was a girl, her father started
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