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  • Essay / Exchanging love for death in Eveline by James Joyce...

    Exchanging love for death in EvelineLike "Araby", "Eveline" is a story of young love, but unlike the sister of Mangan, Eveline has already been courted and won by Frank. , who takes her to marry him and “live with him in Buenos Ayres” (49). Or did she? When she meets him at the station and they are ready to board the ship, Eveline suddenly decides that she cannot accompany Frank, because "he would drown her" in "all the seas of the world" (51). . But Eveline's rejection of Frank is not only a rejection of love, but also a rejection of a new life abroad and an escape from her harsh life at home. And water, as a practical method of escape, as well as a symbol of both rejuvenation and emotional vitality, works multifacetedly to show how much Eveline loses through her fear and lack of courage . By not diving into these “seas of the world that swirled around her heart” (51), Eveline abandons escape, life and love for the past, duty and death. Like many stories in Dubliners, moving east in "Eveline" is associated with a new life. But for Eveline, sailing east with Frank is as much an escape as it is the promise of something better. From the beginning of the story, she is passive and tired (46) and remembers her old neighbors like "the Waters" who have since fled east "to England" (47). She is eager to “leave… like the others” (47). She admits that she will not fail in her work (47) and that at nineteen, without the protection of her older brothers, she begins to feel "herself in danger in the face of her father's violence" (48). Her father takes the little money she earns and she also takes care of her two younger siblings (48 years old). The sound of a street organ playing an Italian tune is both a call to one's friend...... middle of paper ......e, and "maybe love too" and " she had the right to happiness.” (50). However, Eveline is not sure she will find love with Frank, just as she does not know what kind of life they will have together. The adult world of longing, longing, fulfillment, and sorrow boils in "the seas of the world that swirled around her heart" (51) and this unknown world of vitality and emotional power is as frightening to Eveline as the physical reality of sailing. on the other side of the world. In this area, she could drown, sure, but she could just as easily learn to swim. Yet, by refusing to “test the waters,” Eveline condemns herself to a life without emotional fulfillment at all. In the rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood, Eveline only feels that the transformative experience will "drown" her old self and she is unable to adequately imagine a new self emerging from the waves..