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How Does James Joyce Use Allusions In Eveline

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In the short story “Eveline,” the author, James Joyce, explains Eveline’s life story and how she desires to leave her town to start a new life. However, the author utilizes sorrowful diction, allusions, and syntax to convey the complexity that though Eveline yearns to leave, she chooses to stay. Joyce uses allusions to express the dark connotation of her present life, but also her struggles of abuse. Eveline’s present setting of her house is described as “dusty,” and containing a “yellowing” painting on the wall. Dust is accumulated by the lack of people and the abundance of time. Dust as symbolized in Genesis, is what God used to both what humans are created from and what we end as. With the house covered in dust, it seems as an allusion to the other people who have died in her town and would inevitably happen to her if she …show more content…

The boat is described as a “black mass” with the only light being the “illuminated potholes”. The complexity being that the reader would believe that the boat that would ultimately lead to her freedom would be described in a brighter connotation, or at the very least, be described as a boat rather than a mass. When the negatively connotated boat is described in the short story, that is when Eveline reconsiders going on the boat with Frank. This boat could be a recall of her trauma and ultimately what makes Eveline feel like this new life will not help her stray from her trauma and further elaborate that she wants to stay back in the home where she can relate to the happiness she has felt before. Furthermore, she does not feel any guilt about staying without going with John, because she was in love with the idea that Frank could offer her rather than the idea of John, as she “gave him no sign of love or farewell” when she left him at the

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The whole passage focuses on a woman’s flashback to her childhood, and the story of her coming of age, for instance: “‘When I think back to the home town of my youth’” (Collier, 1) and “‘The years have taken me worlds away from that time and that place, from the dust and squalor of our lives,” (Collier, 63). Juxtaposition is used many times aswell. In the story the narrator compares the magnificent amount of dust to the idea of green and lush grass and trees that may have been there, “I don’t know why I should remember only the dust. Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting,” (Collier, 1).

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