Duty
and paralysis are two of the major themes of 's , and the eponymous
character in "" suffers from both when she is incapable of leaving Dublin to Buenos
Ayres.
The vast majority of the story occurs with Eveline sitting at her
window, looking out at the streets of her childhood and noticing how things have changedthe
neighborhood, her family, her relationship with her father. Throughout the story, Joyce employs
free indirect discourse, delving into the mind of Eveline and revealing that she keeps thinking
about the promise she made her mother to "to keep the home together as long as she
could." Near the end of the story, she recalls the last thing her mother told her:
"Derevaun Seraun," Gaelic for "at the end of pleasure, is pain." These two
memories in which Eveline feels duty-bound to her family, especially to her dead mother,
effectively paralyze Eveline and prevent her from boarding the ship with
Frank.
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