I Have Irish Blood in Me!

Just go ahead and watch this video a few times before your read my next post.  You won't be able to concentrate/focus otherwise.  Multiple viewings are also completely necessary; personally I can't watch it once without viewing it about ten more times.



Phew. Now that we got that out of our systems, we can move forward with the post. Relevancy, you ask (as always)? Well, you try sitting through a small or large group discussion about a short story titled Eveline when all you can think about is a six second video of a girl named Eveline getting unsuspectedly smacked across the face. Now, to formally answer a question.

#8. Joyce said that this and other stories he wrote about Dublin dealt with the "spiritual paralysis" of its citizens. What evidence in this story supports that idea as a major theme?

Obviously, there is a clear physical paralysis of Eveline, as she gets cold feet at the last moment before boarding the boat to Buenos Aires with Frank and freezes on the dock. She literally cannot move. But there is evidence of this spiritual paralysis, for instance, when she does make a decision (or lack thereof) and stay in Dublin, her face registers no emotion, no pain or loss of a love as one might expect in the circumstances. Also, at the end of paragraph 9, she describes Dublin as "hard work - a hard life - but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life." This indecisiveness and nostalgia lends itself to a culture that is paralyzed, and in Eveline's case, afraid to make tangible choices that lead to change.