NCERT Solutions Class 12 English Chapter 2 Eveline 2026-27

Concept used. In a character-based answer, an action should be connected with the feeling behind it. Eveline reviews the objects because she is about to leave and is measuring the emotional cost of that departure.

1. Eveline looks around the room she has cleaned for many years.
2. The familiar objects remind her of home, family history, duty, and routine.
3. She wonders whether she will ever see these objects again if she leaves with Frank.
4. Her review of the room shows that home is not only a place of hardship. It is also a place of memory, habit, and emotional attachment.

Eveline reviews the familiar objects because she is preparing to leave home, and each object makes her feel the weight of memory, duty, and possible loss.

Concept used. A direct plot question should answer the place first, then add the purpose and companion. Eveline plans to leave Dublin with Frank and begin married life in Buenos Aires.

1. Eveline is planning to go away with Frank by the night boat.
2. Frank has a home waiting for her in Buenos Aires.
3. She imagines that marriage to Frank will give her respect and a new life.
4. The plan is therefore both geographical and emotional: she wants to leave Dublin and escape her harsh routine.

Eveline was planning to go to Buenos Aires with Frank, to become his wife and begin a new life there.

Concept used. A character-identification answer should give the character's role and the conflict linked to that role. Frank is Eveline's lover, and her father quarrels with him because he distrusts sailor men and opposes the relationship.

1. Frank is a sailor who has travelled to places such as Canada, Patagonia, and Buenos Aires.
2. He courts Eveline, meets her outside the Stores, sings to her, and plans to marry her.
3. Eveline's father discovers the affair and forbids her to meet Frank.
4. He quarrels with Frank because he has a low opinion of sailors and says he knows "these sailor chaps."

Frank was Eveline's sailor-lover. Her father quarrelled with him because he distrusted sailors and wanted to stop Eveline's relationship with him.

Concept used. A symbol becomes significant when it connects the present moment with a powerful memory. The organ-player's music reminds Eveline of her mother's deathbed and of the promise to keep the home together.

1. On the evening of her planned departure, Eveline hears a street organ playing in the avenue.
2. The tune reminds her of the night of her mother's last illness.
3. She remembers her promise to her mother to keep the home together as long as she could.
4. This memory turns escape into guilt and duty, making her decision much harder.

The organ-player is significant because his music reminds Eveline of her dying mother and of the promise that binds her to home.

Concept used. A character-response answer should separate affection, love, dislike, and fear, then support each feeling with evidence from the text.

1. Eveline loves Frank because he is kind, manly, open-hearted, and offers her marriage in Buenos Aires.
2. She likes Harry, her brother, because he helps the family by sending money when he can. She also remembers Ernest fondly as her favourite brother.
3. She does not like Miss Gavan because Miss Gavan has an edge on her and humiliates her at the Stores.
4. She fears and resents her father because he threatens her, quarrels over money, and makes her domestic life hard.

Eveline loved Frank and liked Harry or Ernest. She disliked Miss Gavan's harshness and feared her father because of his violence, control, and money quarrels.

Concept used. Inner conflict means two strong feelings pull a character in opposite directions. Eveline wants escape and happiness, but she also feels fear, guilt, duty, and attachment to home.

1. Eveline feels hope because Frank offers love, marriage, respect, and a new home in Buenos Aires.
2. She feels fear because the journey is unknown and the sea, ship, and crowd overwhelm her.
3. She feels guilt because she promised her mother to keep the home together.
4. She feels attachment because the familiar room and memories of family still hold her.
5. She also feels exhaustion from hard work, threats from her father, and humiliation at the Stores.

Eveline's conflict is between the desire to escape with Frank and the pull of duty, fear, memory, guilt, and familiar home life.

Concept used. A "why" answer should combine immediate cause and deeper cause. Eveline stays because the immediate moment terrifies her, and because years of duty and fear have trained her not to act for herself.

1. Eveline believes Frank can save her, but the actual act of leaving becomes frightening at the station.
2. The boat, crowd, bell, sea, and Frank's urgency create panic in her.
3. Memories of her mother and the promise to keep the home together make escape feel like betrayal.
4. Her life has been shaped by control, poverty, domestic duty, and fear of her father.
5. At the barrier, she cannot transform desire into action. She grips the iron railing and lets Frank go.

Eveline lets the chance go because fear, duty, guilt, habit, and panic overpower her desire for a new life with Frank.

Concept used. Indecision appears through repeated weighing, delayed action, bodily distress, and contradictory memories. Eveline shows all four as departure nears.

1. She sits at the window and reviews the familiar objects instead of acting quickly.
2. She tries to weigh each side of the question: home against marriage with Frank.
3. She writes letters to Harry and her father, which shows that she has not fully cut herself off.
4. She keeps remembering her mother, her father's occasional kindness, and the promise to keep the home together.
5. At the station, she becomes pale, prays silently, feels nausea, and finally clutches the railing.

Her indecision appears in her delay, her weighing of choices, her letters, her memories, her prayer, her physical distress, and her final grip on the iron railing.

Concept used. A discussion answer should present both sides of a problem and then connect them to the chapter. Filial duty is loyalty to family, while personal happiness is the individual's right to live with dignity and choice.

1. Filial duty matters because family members often depend on one another for care, money, and emotional support.
2. In Eveline's case, she has promised her mother to keep the home together and cares for the children.
3. Personal happiness also matters because a person should not be trapped in fear, violence, and endless sacrifice.
4. Eveline's home gives her shelter and memory, but it also gives her exhaustion, threats, and little respect.
5. The problem becomes painful because both duty and happiness make moral claims on her at the same time.

The choice is problematic because family duty can be noble, but it can also trap a person; personal happiness is necessary, but pursuing it may create guilt and loss.

Concept used. A personal-response answer should be relevant, clear, and reflective. It should describe the situation, the two choices, the final decision, and what was learned from it.

1. A student may describe a friend who had to choose between joining a preferred course in another city and staying near home to support a family member.
2. The first choice promised personal growth, new friends, and better opportunities.
3. The second choice protected family comfort and reduced worry at home.
4. After discussion, the friend chose the course but arranged regular visits and online help for the family.
5. The experience showed that difficult choices are easier when people communicate honestly instead of deciding in fear.

A suitable personal example should show a real conflict between two important values and explain the decision with sensitivity.

Concept used. Symbolism means that an object or detail carries a meaning beyond its literal presence. Joyce uses the room and evening details to show Eveline's trapped mind.

1. The window symbolises Eveline's position between two worlds: the home behind her and the outside life she may enter.
2. The gathering dusk suggests uncertainty, decline, and the fading of clear judgement.
3. The dusty cretonne suggests old routine, neglect, stale domestic life, and the heaviness of the past.
4. Its odour becomes a physical reminder of the home she both knows and wants to escape.

The window symbolises Eveline's threshold, dusk symbolises uncertainty and fading hope, and dusty cretonne symbolises stale domestic routine and the weight of the past.

Concept used. A narrative-consciousness answer explains how the story follows a character's thoughts, memories, sensations, and feelings rather than only outside events.

1. The story begins with Eveline sitting by the window, and the narration stays close to what she notices.
2. Her mind moves from the present avenue to childhood games, her father, her mother, work at the Stores, and Frank.
3. The narrative does not simply list events in order. It follows memory, fear, and association.
4. At the station, the narration records her bodily distress, prayer, and panic from inside her experience.

The narrative proceeds through Eveline's consciousness by following her memories, sensory impressions, fears, hopes, and emotional shifts.

Concept used. Imagery links emotion with sensory or physical detail. These expressions show Eveline's panic, dread, helplessness, and emotional numbness.

1. "A bell clanged upon her heart" evokes shock, alarm, and the sudden pressure of decision.
2. "All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart" evokes terror of travel, drowning, and being overwhelmed by the unknown.
3. "Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy" evokes panic, resistance, and desperate refusal to move.
4. "Passive, like a helpless animal" evokes numbness, powerlessness, and loss of human agency.

The images evoke alarm, fear, panic, helplessness, emotional paralysis, and the sense that Eveline is overwhelmed by escape itself.

Concept used. Authorial judgement may be direct or indirect. Joyce does not openly condemn Eveline, but his presentation invites sympathy while also showing the tragedy of her paralysis.

1. Joyce gives detailed reasons for Eveline's fear: her father, money quarrels, work pressure, and her mother's memory.
2. This detail makes students understand her hesitation with sympathy.
3. At the same time, the ending shows the cost of not acting. Frank leaves and Eveline remains frozen.
4. The final description, "passive, like a helpless animal," is painful, but it does not mock her. It shows how deeply trapped she is.

Joyce does not directly judge Eveline; he presents her with sympathy and shows the tragic consequences of emotional paralysis.

Concept used. Parallelism means that two or more sentence parts use a similar grammatical form. Here, both parallel parts are infinitive phrases beginning with "to."

1. The sentence has two linked infinitive phrases.
2. The first phrase is "to go away."
3. The second phrase is "to leave her home."
4. Both phrases explain what Eveline had consented to do.

She had consented to go away, to leave her home.

Concept used. Parallelism can appear through repeated noun phrases. Here, the sentence balances "the promise to her mother" with "her promise to keep the home together."

1. The sentence first mentions "the promise to her mother."
2. It then repeats the idea as "her promise to keep the home together."
3. Both phrases refer to the same duty and reinforce its emotional weight.
4. The repetition makes the promise sound unavoidable to Eveline.

Strange that it should come that very night to remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the home together as long as she could.

Concept used. Parallel infinitive phrases often show two related actions with the same structure. Here, "to direct her" and "to show her" are parallel.

1. The main action is "She prayed to God."
2. The first purpose phrase is "to direct her."
3. The second purpose phrase is "to show her what was her duty."
4. Both phrases express Eveline's desire for moral guidance.

She prayed to God to direct her, to show her what was her duty.

Concept used. Parallelism may use repeated verb phrases. Here, "take her in his arms" and "fold her in his arms" are parallel because they share a similar verb-object-prepositional pattern.

1. The first parallel part is "take her in his arms."
2. The second parallel part is "fold her in his arms."
3. Both phrases describe Frank protecting Eveline.
4. The repetition strengthens the feeling that Frank might save her.

Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms.

Concept used. Participial phrases ending in "-ing" can create parallel action. Here, "leaning" and "inhaling" are parallel because they show simultaneous actions.

1. Eveline continues to sit by the window.
2. The first parallel participial phrase is "leaning her head against the window curtain."
3. The second parallel participial phrase is "inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne."
4. Both phrases show her stillness and sensory attachment to the room.

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window, leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty cretonne.

Concept used. Parallel verb phrases can share the same subject and helping verb. Here, Eveline's father "had read" and "made" two kindly actions in sequence.

1. The subject is Eveline's father, referred to as "he."
2. The first parallel action is "had read her out a ghost story."
3. The second parallel action is "made toast for her at the fire."
4. Both actions show one of his gentler moments.

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 at the fire.

Concept used. In pronunciation, the stressed syllable is spoken with greater force, length, or clarity than the other syllables. Dictionaries mark stress to guide correct speech.

1. pho-to-graph has stress on the first syllable.
2. es-cape has stress on the second syllable.
3. chan-ges has stress on the first syllable.
4. threat-en has stress on the first syllable.
5. ex-cite-ment has stress on the second syllable.
6. fare-well is usually stressed on the second syllable.
7. i-llu-mined has stress on the second syllable.
8. sai-lor has stress on the first syllable.
9. sac-ri-fice has stress on the first syllable.
10. in-var-i-a-ble has stress on the second syllable.

pho-to-graph; es-cape; chan-ges; threat-en; ex-cite-ment; fare-well; i-llu-mined; sai-lor; sac-ri-fice; in-var-i-a-ble.