Notes

Setting:
.......The story begins on an evening in a residential
section of Dublin, around 1900. It ends the same evening
at a dock where a night-boat (ferry) awaits passengers.

Point of View
.......Joyce tells the story in third-person point of view. In
the first paragraph, the narrator reports from a distance,
as if he is sitting across the room from Eveline. In the
second paragraph, the narrator enters the mind of Eveline
and reports the rest of the story from there,

Characters
Eveline: Dublin woman not yet twenty. She lives at home
with her father, who threatens her. Her name is a
variation of Evelyn. 
Mr. Hill: Eveline's father, who mistreats her. The words
he was usually fairly bad on Saturday night suggest that
he drinks heavily on weekends.
Mrs. Hill: Deceased mother of Eveline.
Frank: An exIrish sailor who says he will marry Eveline
after they go to Argentina to live.
Eveline's Brothers, Sisters: Eveline identifies only two
of them: the oldest, Ernest, who is dead at the time that
Eveline reflects on her past, and Harry, who works in the
church-decorating business.

Analysis:
this story focuses on the theme of escape.
Eveline has been given a chance. Yet in the end, the girl
finds herself incapable of going.Certainly, she has every reason to leave. The portrait we
have of her family life is less than heart-warming. We see
that she has taken on an incredible part of the burden in
keeping the family together, as her mother did before her.

Summary:
Eveline Hill sits at a window in her home and looks out onto the street while fondly recalling her childhood, when she played with other children in a field now developed with new homes. Her thoughts turn to her sometimes abusive father with whom she lives, and to the prospect of freeing herself from her hard life juggling jobs as a shop worker and a nanny to support herself and her father. Eveline faces a difficult dilemma: remain at home like a dutiful daughter, or leave Dublin with her lover, Frank, who is a sailor. He wants her to marry him and live with him in Buenos Aires, and she has already agreed to leave with him in secret. As Eveline recalls, Frank’s courtship of her was pleasant until her father began to voice his disapproval and bicker with Frank. After that, the two lovers met clandestinely.

As Eveline reviews her decision to embark on a new life, she holds in her lap two letters, one to her father and one to her brother Harry. She begins to favor the sunnier memories of her old family life, when her mother was alive and her brother was living at home, and notes that she did promise her mother to dedicate herself to maintaining the home. She reasons that her life at home, cleaning and cooking, is hard but perhaps not the worst option—her father is not always mean, after all. The sound of a street organ then reminds her of her mother’s death, and her thoughts change course. She remembers her mother’s uneventful, sad life, and passionately embraces her decision to escape the same fate by leaving with Frank.

At the docks in Dublin, Eveline waits in a crowd to board the ship with Frank. She appears detached and worried, overwhelmed by the images around her, and prays to God for direction. Her previous declaration of intent seems to have never happened. When the boat whistle blows and Frank pulls on her hand to lead her with him, Eveline resists. She clutches the barrier as Frank is swept into the throng moving toward the ship. He continually shouts “Come!” but Eveline remains fixed to the land, motionless and emotionless.