Sacrifice For The Greater Good
... for Eveline to hold the rest of the family together. So how could she run away? A hard life makes a soft heart, or so they say, and in Eveline’s case, it could not have been more true considering her father. He was no doubt a mean man who was incapable of thinking of anyone but himself. She was different however – she was better. Mondays through Fridays were spent taking care of the kids and her father, on top of working for the meager wage of seven shillings per week which her father took every Saturday until she agreed to spend some of the money on Sunday dinner. How could anyone not want to escape such a life. I would have and so did Eveline. She had already written her goodbye letters to her brother Harry and to her self-centered father. Even then she remembered “not long before when she had been laid up for a day, he had read her out a ghost story and made toast for her by the fire. Another day, when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to Hill of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother’s bonnet to make the children laugh.”(5). She probably thought that there might be hope for her father as he grew older. Eveline is one of those people that looks for the good in people and puts others before herself. But if she left what would people say? She could probably envision her father telling the kids “how Eveline abandon them.” How could she leave with the image of those kids in her mind? They would be helpless without her there. The sad distant look on their faces would surely haunt her in her new home. Sure, the prospect of a life with Frank in Buenos Ayres was filled with new and grand possibilities. New friends, a house of her own, and her own identity were all very alluring. For the first time in her life she had a chance at freedom. She knew “she had a right to happiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He would save her.”(6). In Buenos Ayres with frank “[…] she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence.”(4). But how did she know life in a distant country would not be worse. What if Frank changed? What if…? She knew she could at least tolerate life as it is with her father and the kids. What exactly was frank to her anyway; she didn’t love him. Her relationship with Frank was nothing more than her first taste of the excitement of having a fellow in her life. S...