James Joyce’s novel Dubliners is a vivid depiction of the degrading state of Irish society. Joyce uses different central ideas or situations to portray every aspect of society in Dublin but it is evident that, in every situation, the characters are trapped by the familial, social and economic pressures of Dublin into an imperfect situation in which they strive to escape and achieve freedom but often fail to reach that point. Thus Joyce alludes in his short stories that human beings indulge in games to escape from life’s seriousness and the harshness of reality that is too hard to cope with. Throughout his novel, characters are seen to ‘play games’ with their problems of life, death,

In this eventful and vivid depiction of the game that Eveline is finding extremely overwhelming to control, she is seen to be “among the swaying crowd”, unable to choose a side. Yet Joyce’s selection of imagery seems to suggest and hint towards the path that Eveline would eventually take. Her past life, which is depicted to be a “black mass…with illumined portholes”, “blew a long mournful whistle into the mist” and hinted for her to give it a second chance. The dramatic imagery of the “bell clang[ing] upon her heart” represents the large impact of her decision. Similarly, the use of hyperboles as “all the seas of the world tumbled about her heart” clearly represent that she is pressed and torn between a decision that she does not want to make.

When Eveline is given the chance to break free from her current life, she once again enters a set of games in which she wanders back and forth, like a tennis ball from one side of the court to the other, between her two choices – a new life with Frank or returning to her burdensome life with her family.

There used to be a field in which they used to play every evening with other people’s children…The children of the avenue used to play together in the field – the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Koegh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters.

The game she played, however, reached a point in which she lost almost all control of it and is forced to risk her daughter’s musical career for her obsession for winning at the game she concocted in the first place. The scene in which Mrs. Kearney is bargaining with the concert organizers proves to be a childish approach to solving the problem. However, she does not stop this and goes to the extent of “arguing with her husband and daughter, gesticulating them”, refraining from giving up, even until the last moment “she stood still for an instant like an angry stone image, and when the first notes of the song struck her ear, she caught up her daughter’s cloak…wrapped the cloak around her daughter” and marched out This playful stunt of Mrs. Kearney jeopardized her daughter’s chances of ever reviving her name in the musical circle, but this did not concern her, as in her mind, she had won at the game.

When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many houses, where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor to brave it and offer her

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