Eveline, James Joyce

 Eveline, James Joyce


Rating: 8.5/10


 Eveline, 19 years old girl, was living with  supporting his father as a child head of household. Her mother and brother died a few years ago, and her younger brother was also living far away. But after her mother died, she was abused by her father and eventually decided to leave to Buenos Aires with Frank, her lover. But she failed to leave. 

 Even though she could have gain freedom from poverty, oppression, and abuse, she didn't leave. Maybe it was because of her family. She thought of the words left by dead mother and image of a kind father before mother die, and these could have prevent her from abandoning her family. But I think Joyce wanted to show paralysis once again through Eveline's choice. It is described that "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He [Frank] was drawing her into them: he would drown her." She was afraid that all the seas in the world strike her and fall into them. In the end, these fears paralyzed her. Furthermore, I think Joyce tried to show the helpless and passive appearance of the Irish people at that time through this paralysis. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov (1898)

 Gooseberries, Anton Chekhov (1898) Rating: 7/10 While reading this short story, I focused on the word 'happiness'. In this story, Aliokhin, Ivan, and Burkin all have different idea about happiness. Their different definition of happiness made readers think about the real happiness. What if that individual's own happiness equals to other people's unhappiness. If individual's happiness comes from another person's unhappiness, then when someone feels happiness, some others have no choice but to feel misfortunes. Through these questions, I could have think of the true happiness.  
Read more

The Sisters, James Joyce

 The Sisters, James Joyce Rating: 7/10  While reading this short story, I focused on the word "paralysis". This word first came when the boy thought of paralysis unconsciously but he didn't even know the meaning of the word. Also, he thought of gnomon and simony at the same time. But after seeing the dead body of Flynn, he thought of paralysis again and this time consciously. I thought this story ultimately describes the paralysis of religions and churches. It was intended to emphasize the seriousness of the paralysis by expressing the process of unconsciousness becoming conscious. Through this, I thought, it tried to strongly criticize the paralyzed reality of religion, which was so serious that it was imprinted in the unconscious mind of Irish children at that time. 
Read more

Reading Journal, A Sound of Thunder

 A Sound of Thunder, By Ray Bradbury (1952) Rating: 6.5/10  When I think of the hero’s Journey or movies I’ve read so far, I always think of how the main characters (or the heroes) improve their power and how they overcome hardships. Actually, most of stories related to hero follow a similar structure. However, “A Sound of Thunder”, though it is the story about Eckels’ hero journey, focused on different topic compare to other stories of heroes. This story doesn’t really talk about the characters, instead it uses characters to show the “butterfly effect.” In the adventure, Eckels accidentally step on butterfly and killed it. The change of president appeared as the result of Eckels' action. This event represent well about butterfly effect, which means a situation in which an action that does not seem important has a very large effect.  I think this is the uniqueness of this story. It actually focused on the topic, “butterfly effect”, rather than the journey itself. However,...
Read more