Eveline’s Feelings of Guilt

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Eveline’s feelings of guilt that keep her trapped Have you ever felt trapped in a situation and wonder why you were in it? This is what James Joyce is relating to his story, “Eveline”. The main character Eveline is a grown woman that has many memories that kept her trapped in a life that she has been accustomed to but not really the life that she wants for herself. James Joyce illustrates the effect of a person’s guilt within everyday life and responsibilities. This is the weight that keeps us down even when someone is trying to help make things easier by removing the weight to improve our situation. In James Joyce’s short story “Eveline”, the theme that prevails is that guilt can keep a prisoner in their mundane everyday life. The first sentence of the story introduces the negative tone that would lead to the story’s’ theme of guilt, “She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired” (640). The boring and exhausting image of Evelines’ daily life is brought to the reader’s attention by the effective descriptive words used to explain the scene. The writer uses words like “invade” to describe the sun setting. This gives the reader a violated impression early on in the story of the atmosphere. Another clue is the reference to the smell of dusty cretonne; James Joyce is giving the reader the ability to understand that the girl, Eveline, notices dust on the curtains. What the reader realizes later is that she does dust every week and as predicted the dust comes back and covers the curtains every week. The symbolic use of dust lets the reader realize that nothing changes in the house, and that is what Eveline is use to in her life. She is comfortable with the repetitive mundane details of everyday life. She has survived this far;

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