Formalist Approach Story Eveline Home example essay topic

The short story "Eveline", by James Joyce, displays many elements that can be defined as formalist. The formalist approach focuses on the language, structure and tone of a work. Examples of formalist elements can be shown throughout the story. When the story begins, James Joyce addresses to the protagonist by saying "her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the odor of dusty cretonne". Right away I wonder of the tone. When I keep reading, the dust is mentioned again.

"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". Seems to me, the dust symbolizes the struggle. When someone breathes in the dust you automatically start coughing and chocking. For that reason, the fight is there between your life and death.

Eveline wanted to know where all of her difficulties came from to attack her. As I read more into the story, internal conflict within Eveline develops. She tries to decide on where she should leave home or not. She knows that the life in Buenos Aires will be better. Frank "had a home waiting for her". In Argentina, "she would be married - she, Eveline.

However, Eveline also saw leaving home in a negative way. "She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weight each side of the question.

In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known her life about her" p. 405. When all these conflicts come together, I realize that the tone of this story is ambivalence. She is conflicting within herself, and has many reasons to leave home, then suddenly switches to another decision and that is when the ironic tone comes into the text. Like any story that have a struggle between good and bad, I expected the protagonist to win at the end. I expected happiness, I was sure that Eveline will leave with Frank, but the change was very sudden.

This makes us think about the structure. The structure of this story is non-chronological. Joyce jumps from one time to another. He tells us of one happening right before something completely unexpected.

The beginning of the story goes right back to Eveline's childhood. Joyce describes how many people Eveline knew that left home, and then transfers us to a different tune where she has to make decision about leaving her home. "Now she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home. Home! She looked around the room... ". p. 405. The climax of the story is when she suddenly realizes that she has to go.

"Escape! She must escape!" p. 406. There is a beginning and an end to this story however, the body of the story is all about flashbacks and sudden doings. There were also many ways how Joyce used the language. "She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue" p. 404. The author's use of language here shows us that the night was coming, which also makes us wonder if the "darkness" of the story was coming also.

Joyce writes that the danger of her father's violence had given Eveline "palpitations". We can see that Eveline obviously was very afraid. "The Evening deepened in the avenue" lets us think if the darkness in the story that foreshadowed in the beginning was near. By taking a formalist approach, we can examine how all these elements work together to give a coherent shape to a work while contributing to its meaning. Formalist criticism opens up the story and discusses every small happening as a grand part. The tone, language and structure of the work become a center of thinking which make us see the story from a completely different side.