Professor Culpepper
English 102 .014
17 December 2012
Eveline
Eveline is the story of a young woman’s life in Dublin, Ireland in the 1900s. The story starts out in a very somber tone. Eveline is staring outside the window reminiscing on a time when she was happy. Her mother was alive and her father was “not so bad then”(Joyce 552). Her father is now an abusive alcoholic and her mother has been dead for years. Although Eveline’s reasons for being happy in Dublin are gone, she holds on to the past and it prevents her from having a full life. Eveline’s false hope in the past prevents her from leaving with Frank and pursuing a happy life. When she weighs each side of the situation she fails in coming up with any meaningful reasons to stay. However, her reasons to go are important and plentiful. She has met a man named Frank, who treats her well and has enough money to give Eveline many opportunities. Eveline also notes that she would not be leaving behind a successful or fulfilling career. Her boss humiliates her and makes her feel inferior all the time. She knows that if she chooses to leave Dublin she would be treated with respect, unlike her mother. All of the money she makes at her job is usually taken by her father. She has to fight with him just to get enough money to pay for groceries. Her father is an abusive alcoholic who instills fear in Eveline on a regular basis. Even so, she still takes care of him and two other children. Eveline has no time to care for herself and her personal happiness. She has always been taking care of others. The only time Eveline is happy is when she is remembering the past. Frank is Eveline’s only escape into a life with a purpose or future. It seems that Eveline has an epiphany when she remembers her mother’s death. Not because of the promise she made to her mother, but because of the lack of life that her mother had: “As