In his short story "Eveline", James Joyce uses symbols--such as the past, dust, and an old photograph--to portray all that holds Eveline back from becoming an individual. Eveline is one who longs to escape from home, one who relies on the past to stabilize her present, and one who depends on others to make decisions for her. Joyce's symbolism represents the conflict that young adults often face when on the verge of breaking into adulthood and essentially coming-of-age.
I. Joyce begins the text with Eveline reminiscing her childhood; recurring nostalgia shows that Eveline has a tight grip on the past.
a. "Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive."
b. "Sometimes he could be very nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire.... Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic...She remembered her father putting on her mother's bonnet to make the children laugh."
II. The concept of dust represents the layers of time that accumulated over the years and appears in the text more than once.
a. "She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne. She was tired."
b. "Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from."
III. Joyce uses the yellowing photograph of her father's old school friend as a warning to Eveline-- those who leave inevitably disappoint her father.
a. "And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium..."
b. "He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word: 'He is in Melbourne now'."
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