Question

The SIFT Method of Liteary Analysis with "Eveline"

Using the SIFT method of literary analysis, you can “sift” through the parts in order to comprehend the whole.


S Symbol: examine the title and text of story for symbolism

I Images: identify images and sensory details

F Figures of Speech: analyze figurative language and other devices

T Tone and Theme: discuss how all devices reveal tone and theme


Make sure that you respond to each prompt in complete sentences.


SYMBOL: A symbol can be an object, a setting, an event, an animal, or even a person that functions in the story the way you’d expect it to, but it also stands for something more than itself, usually for something abstract and has a great deal of emphasis. Symbols are often visual and reappear throughout the story.


SYMBOL: Find one in the story & list it below.

Describe HOW the author uses the symbol. WHY did the author use the symbol? Tell me what the author wants you to LEARN from the symbol. What’s the deeper MEANING?


Tell me WHERE it appears in the story and what ROLE it plays in the story.

EXAMPLE: Water/Sea


EXAMPLE: At the end of the story, Eveline can’t make a decision. The sea represents freedom, which is the same as the unknown to Eveline. She is afraid of both freedom and the unknown.

EXAMPLE: Eveline is not ready for the unknown, and she feels like Frank is pressuring her. She says, “all the seas of the world tumble[d] about her heart” (Joyce 128).

IMAGERY: Writers use language to create sensory impressions and to evoke specific responses to characters, objects, events, or situations in their works. The writer “shows” rather than “tells” in order to allow the reader to participate in the experience of what they are reading. Therefore, imagery helps to produce mood and tone.


IMAGERY: Find one in the story & list it below.

What imagery does the author use to help you see, hear, taste, smell, or FEEL what is happening?

What EFFECT is the author trying to convey with these images?


EXAMPLE: Eveline sitting and watching the sunset on the avenue

EXAMPLE: As Eveline looks around her home, she is “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” (Joyce 124). She continues the description of her home focusing on the “yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium:” (Joyce 124).

EXAMPLE: Eveline’s description of her home makes it seem more real. If she leaves with Frank, she may never see her home again. She focuses on each detail as if she wants to remember it forever.

FIGURES OF SPEECH: Writers form images by using figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, etc.


FIGURES OF SPEECH: Find one in the story & list it below.

What is an example in the story?

How do it help to convey effect and meaning in the story?


EXAMPLE: Eveline repeats several times that Frank will save her.

It seems that Eveline has made a decision and plans to join Frank, “Escape! She must escape! Frank would save her” (Joyce 127).

It appears she is trying to convince herself that leaving with Frank is the right decision. If she leaves with Frank, then she will be happy and safe. She will have the chance for happiness.

TONE: Tone is the author’s attitude, stated or implied, toward a subject. A close examination of word choice, imagery, and detail reveals the narrator’s attitude or tone and contributes to the reader’s understanding


TONE: Come up with a tone word on your own & list it below.

WHAT is the tone of the story?

HOW did you know this was the tone?


EXAMPLE: Melancholy

EXAMPLE: Eveline has this melancholy feeling because she’s wondering if she’s betraying her town for leaving home. The people who leave aren’t liked anymore by the ones who stayed. She’s realizing that if she leaves she would be one of those people.

EXAMPLE: On her mother’s death bed Eveline made a “promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could” (Joyce 22). Now she’s starting to feel guilty for wanting to leave and not keeping the home together.


THEME: Ask yourself what ideas emerge from the reading--- injustice, social protest, corruption, tradition, individuality, etc. What are two thematic words that come to mine? Explain in one or two sentences what the author says about each of these subjects.


Subject #1 (use a thematic word): _____________________________________________________

What does the author have to say about the subject?


Subject #2 (use a thematic word): _______________________________________________________

What does the author have to say about the subject?

Answer 1

One of the symbols James Joyce uses as a resource is the sea. This symbols appears at the end of the story, when Eveline seems not to be able to take a decision. The meaning of the symbol is the unknown. When he writes "all the seas of the world tumbled about her heart", Joyce tells us that Eveline felt the anguish of not knowing what would happen to her if she chose to elope with Frank. The seas of the world represent seven negative feelings, among which it is uncertainty. The author chooses to use the sea as a symbol of desolation because when you set off into it, you never know if you are going to come back. When we think about the sea, we think about a journey, so coming back is implied. Therefore, she may assume that she would have to come back some day and that she was not going to be welcome back in her own land. Leaving her father, although he was abusive, would have been considered a serious offense by Dubliners of the beginning of the twentieth century.

One of the items of imagegy used by Joyce is the odour of dusty cretonne. By this smell, defined as odour with the negative connotation that word has, the author intends to make us feel the same disgust Eveline is feeling at the end of another day in which more of the same old story was what she had to live. The fact that the cretonne is "dusty" gives us the idea of old, dirty and fadded. All these adjectives are the ones that also describe her life.

There is a personification used at the beginning of the story. It is when he writes "... the evening invade de avenue". The author gives the evening the power of a person when he states that it performs the action of invading. In this case, his intention is to show that even an abstract thing is stronger than the weakened and tired Eveline. She is not only tired in the physical sense, but specially in the moral one. The evening approaches and it does not only "invade" the street, but also her existence.

The tone of the story is sad. The only hope Joyce put in Eveline's life is the presence of Frank. Everything about her past and present, apart from her boyfriend, implies desolation, pain and sorrow. Fear also appears as an important element regarding the tone of the story. All her siblings and also herself, were afraid of their father. At the end of the story, Eveline is afraid of the people of the community, that is one of the reasons why she decides to stay. What is almost paradoxical is that she's afraid of Frank, the man who she was sure could save her.