A bell clanged upon her heart.
Throughout the story, the readers are shown that Eveline's life is dull and oppressive. By all accounts, she should've leapt on the ship with joy. But, strangely, it's so... logical? understandable? that she is paralyzed at the critical moment.
He
This paragraph has a lot of sentences that start with "He...", which, for me, reflects Eveline's infatuation with Frank. It's almost like she wants to rush through his kind traits because he has so many, and she doesn't want to lose track of them in her mind.
Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness.
All that effort, and the only result is disappointment. It's interesting how this is the whole story -- a boy has a crush on a girl, goes to a market, and it's closed. When comparing it to the author's previous stories in Dubliners, this story is also about a dull reality, with language and descriptions that whisper towards an idea, rather than spelling it out for the readers.
But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
Beautiful language in this entire paragraph. Interesting how the setting is supposed to be so ordinary, but the beauty of the writing compensates for it.
At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously as if he were telling us something secret which he did not wish others to overhear.
The author's way of describing the old man through the lens of a young, naive child is never concrete or accusatory. He writes the smallest details about the old man that unnerves the reader and flashes distant warning signals in the corners of our brains, but it's difficult to say exactly why the old man is disquieting.
“I say! Look what he’s doing!”
We can infer that the old man's pleasuring himself? There are never concrete details, but we can guess this from the author's hints and small details that depict the old man's unsavory nature.
talking to no one and wandering about by himself.
Father Flynn exhibited bizarre behavior, and the narrator's memories of him are also depicted as haunting and fearful. The narrator, a young boy, half-catches things (especially adult realities concerning the Church) that pass through the filter of his innocence.
. When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.
It seems like the Father Flynn made the narrator uncomfortable, though the narrator mentally rebelled at the suggestion from Old Cotter that their relationship was unhealthy.
They were strangers to him. Life had passed him by. Charlotte was not his wife. His wife!
While I understand that Mr. Neave's hard work afforded the luxury his family enjoys, I'm a bit frustrated that he feels so isolated. Maintaining love and relationships requires effort from both sides -- he hardly tried on his side, but is somehow also taken aback that his family isn't "the same" or showering him with affection.
They were too... too...
I like the use of ellipses in this story. It almost reflects Mr. Neave's constant fatigue, his wandering thoughts...
And you’ll smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache
What a downer... I wonder if this is some form of the fat man's own insecurity of now being unwanted, masked as confidence earned from maturity. It parallels Leila's insecurity in her inexperience.
But the difference between that dusty-smelling hall—with calico texts on the walls, the poor terrified little woman in a brown velvet toque with rabbit’s ears thumping the cold piano, Miss Eccles poking the girls’ feet with her long white wand—and this was so tremendous that Leila was sure if her partner didn’t come and she had to listen to that marvellous music and to watch the others sliding, gliding over the golden floor, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and fly out of one of those dark windows that showed the stars.
This is the longest sentence in The Garden Party according to our last homework. It uses em dashes and long, descriptive phrases with commas to compare and contrast Leila's school balls and her first real ball.
“Our client moreover is positive... We are inclined to reconsider... in the event of—” Ah, that was better.
William would rather bury himself in his work than think about his wife and home life. His dismissive wife and gluttonous friends and him rarely seeing his children are all too-large and too-real problems that seem impossible to solve.
And, laughing, in the new way, she ran down the stairs.
This story kills me because it seems way too real. In the end, after all, Isabel chooses to "laugh the new way," choosing to stay her vain self and return to her shallow friends who mock her own husband.
“Dreadfully sweet!” said she.
Her beauty excuses her overly abrasive behavior. She seems to be annoyed that her mother is careless of her own thoughts and feelings while parading her daughter's beauty to everyone.
even asked if I might smoke
We get little hints of the narrator's gender but never really fully know until now. It was customary for men to ask a women's permission to smoke in front of her.
And Constantia said more loudly than she meant to, “Mice.”
Constantia sees the mouse and its helplessness, and probably thinks of herself in a similar situation. I imagine that she feels a mixture of pity, helplessness, sympathy, and, finally, a small amount of denial towards those first three feelings, causing her to say "Mice" louder than she intended.
thinking things out, talking things over, wondering, deciding, trying to remember where
Flowy sentences with similar-meaning but ultimately different actions, separated by commas. Makes the story much more intimate and stream-of-consciousness.
“Isn’t life,” she stammered, “isn’t life—”
She never finishes her thought, leaving us to fill in the blank. I'd like to think that she says "isn't life beautiful?"
Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer.
Love the use of color and warm imagery. I wonder how we could plot the sentiment of this story using these.
the merciless dislike and distrust with which I am met by other people
Jennings' thoughts of self-worth, and the fact that he's brightened up by a modicum of kindness, reminds me of how tragic his isolation and history is.