Joyce’s portrayal of thought in Eveline Essay -- James Joyce Dubliners

Joyces portrayal of perspective in EvelineAmong the short stories in the collection Dubliners by James Joyce, Eveline is a storywherein the subscriber views the world through the eyes of the eponymous heroine. In delineatingher contemplations, Joyce mainly uses the third person narrative with traces of free indirectdiscourse. The narration sequence at starting line glance appears to be highly disconnected. However, itis through the judicious use of both these devices that Joyce succeeds in portraying with a greatdeal of realism the progression of thought in the human mind. By using this peculiar mode ofnarration, Joyce makes us realize that, the process of thinking is not crisp and continuous afterthe direction of a well-crafted chain of deductive logic. Rather, this reader is presented with adifferent paradigm that of staccato bursts mistily but surely connected by the wispy associate ofkey phrases and events. The unmistakable message Joyce leaves us with is that human thoug htdoes not proceed in a straight line.Eveline is the story of a young miss her memories, fears and aspirations. It is no meanfeat to convey the naked thoughts of a human being, to paint the dull and the bright shades offeeling with like fidelity and to subscribe back what has been lost during the translation to words. Wecan start to appreciate how Joyce does this by considering the distribution of sentences in someof the paragraphs in the story. At first sight, the sentences appear to be rather slapdash in thatthey do not bear the mark of being part of a continuous sequence of logical thought, as one(a)would expect from a piece of formal writing. The following lines illustrate this point...she heard his footsteps clacking along th... ...e shift from past to present. One could say that it is the pivot closely which the frame ofreference is rotated from past into present. Of course, this is merely the most explicit example ofsuch temporal shifts that abound in this work. It shou ld be noted in time that r arly does such ashift occur in the actual tense of the verbs involved. Rather, Joyce hints at it by using devicessuch as that discussed above.We can olibanum see that Joyce succeeds to a great extent in charting the currents of thoughtin the mind of his protagonist in a most realistic way. The devices used are subtle and ingeniousand one might say considering the period in which he created Eveline very unconventional.While Joyces breaking of conventions is apparent in Eveline, it is his novels, Ulysses andFinnegans wake that offer a wider scope for this literary avant-garde.