Steven Smith answers “Based on the last paragraph of the novel,...”

Sarah asked this question about Brooklyn (Eilis Lacey, #1):

Based on the last paragraph of the novel, do you think Eilis happily returned to Tony and she realized she made the right decision? I am trying to make peace with the ending. "She has gone back to Brooklyn...these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself."

Steven Smith I think one reading is that the coming to mean more and more to her is in specific reference to the fact that they were spoken to Jim and she would re…moreI think one reading is that the coming to mean more and more to her is in specific reference to the fact that they were spoken to Jim and she would regret the decision. However, my reading is that it was simply that her feelings seem to be governed mostly by her immediate surroundings and she literally meant that the fact of her leaving for Brooklyn would mean she would be spending the rest of her life in Brooklyn and all that it would mean for her. I think her near smile in the last sentence should give you good reason to feel that she made the right decision. For her, everything that is close at hand is real and the further she gets from a place in space and time, the more hazy, dream-like and unreal it becomes.(less)

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