Riassunti: - Eveline - She was fast asleep - in Dubliners di J. Joyce

Eveline, Dubliners 

Eveline, a nineteen year old girl, is fall in love with Frank, open mind and kind sailor. She would  leave for Buenos Aires with him. Eveline is sat at a window of her house thinking about her life. She has a mortifying work, her family is poor, the father is violent and the dead of the mother left by herself. But because of the nostalgia she is insecure and doubtful in taking a decision about her new life in Argentina (psychological paralysis), but at the end of the story Eveline give up a new happy life. This passage is an example of narrative Joyce’s experimentalism: are employed the use of free indirect speech and the compenetration of different narrative plans; chronological order of events is confused by subjective time of Eveline’s emotions. 

She was fast asleep, The Dead, Dubliners 

Gretta falls asleep in the bedroom, but Gabriel remains awake, disturbed by Gretta’s new information about Michael Furey, a boy who died for her. He curls up on the bed, contemplating his own mortality. Now that he knows that another man preceded him in Gretta’s life, he feels not jealousy, but sadness that Michael Furey once felt an aching love that he himself has never known. Reflecting on his own controlled, passionless life, he realizes that life is short. Even aunt Julia would die soon and he would have comforted her aunt kate. Seeing the snow at the window, he envisions it blanketing the graveyard where Michael Furey rests, as well as all of Ireland. The description concentrates on Gabriel's insecurities, his social awkwardness, and the defensive way he copes with his discomfort. The main theme is the intersection of life and death. The narrator maintains a neutral and distant presence.