Does Eilis’s notion of her duty to family evolve from the beginning of the novel-when she leaves Enniscorthy-to the end, when she returns to Tony in America?ġ2. Do you believe that this is Eilis’s true reason, or might her silence indicate other motives?ġ1. Eilis decides to keep her marriage to Tony a secret from her mother and friends in Enniscorthy because she believes they won’t understand. Something happens to Rose that, in retrospect, makes you reexamine the reasons she might have urged Eilis to move to America. How do you explain her confusion? What does it tell us about the Ireland-and New York-of the 1950s?ħ.
When the clerk of the law bookstore in Manhattan engages her in conversation, Eilis displays an ignorance of the Holocaust that would startle us today. Do you see her primarily as a career-motivated woman, or as a wife and mother? How does Toibin present the conflict between job and family in the 1950s? How is it different today?Ħ. Does this reflect their relationship with Eilis? Why would Colm Toibin make this stylistic choice? How would your perception of the characters in Brooklyn be different if Tobin had written the novel from the “first-person” perspective of Eilis?ĥ. Some characters in the novel are referred to as Miss or Mrs., while others are identified by their first name. Why do you think Eilis is hesitant in her feelings? Is a relationship with such uneven attachment doomed from the start, or do you believe that one person can “learn” to love another over time?Ĥ. Tony, however, is clear about his love for Eilis from the start. When Eilis and Tony first meet, she seems more interested in him as an escape from her troublesome housemates than as a genuine romantic interest. How does Eilis react to the divisions among Europeans immigrants from different countries, as well as those between white and black Americans? How are the traditional ethnic lines of Brooklyn beginning to break down in the 1950s?ģ. At work, she must confront racial integration when Bartocci’s opens its doors for the first time to black customers. As Eilis begins night classes in accounting, she notes the divisions between Italian and Jewish students, and the lack of English or other Irish students. Why do you think the Irish had such a rosy view of America? How are Eilis’s expectations met upon her arrival?Ģ. Instead, they were happy there and proud” (pg 26). Before she goes to America, Eilis believes that, “While people from the town who lived in England missed Enniscorthy, no one who went to America missed home.
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