When Joe and Mrs. Donnelly encourage Maria to sing for them and their guests, she does so, despite her nerves. The narrator captures Maria’s anxiety in this moment using imagery, as seen in the following passage:
Mrs. Donnelly said “Do, please, Maria!” and so Maria had to get up and stand beside the piano. Mrs. Donnelly bade the children be quiet and listen to Maria's song. Then she played the prelude and said “Now, Maria!” and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny quavering voice.
Because Joyce does not use much imagery throughout the story, the subtle descriptions he includes here are important. He wants readers to be able to picture—and also to feel—the heat of Maria’s “blushing” face as well as hear her “tiny quavering voice” as she begins to sing for the group. All of this language combines to give the impression that, though Maria agrees to sing, she does not do so with confidence or ease.
This is one of the many moments in the story in which Maria suppresses her own feelings and desires in order to please the people around her. She is so uncomfortable with the attention that she can barely get the song out and yet she does so simply because she was asked.
During the climax of the story—in which Maria plays the blindfold game and selects the piece of clay—the narrator uses imagery, as seen in the following passage:
She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and then a great deal of scuffling and whispering.
The imagery here intentionally engages readers’ different senses to bring them closer into the scene—they can picture Maria moving her hand “about here and there in the air,” feel the “soft wet substance” as she touches it without seeing it, and hear the uncomfortable “scuffling and whispering” as the young women leading the game move things around so Maria can select a different item.
While contemporary readers may not understand the significance of this moment, Joyce knew that his 20th century Irish readers would recognize that Maria had selected clay in this classic Hallow Eve game, and that clay was a harbinger for death. The fact that Maria refuses to interpret this “soft wet substance” as clay is perhaps the most obvious example in the story of her tendency toward denial and repression. As Joyce’s readers knew, the only “soft wet substance” one could choose in this game was clay, making it clear that Maria’s lack of recognition is due to her inability to face the difficult things that happen in her life.
The sounds of “scuffling and whispering” point to the ways that people in Maria’s life go along with her denial—rather than exclaiming that she chose the clay, the young women and Donnellys together readjust the game so that Maria is able to choose a prayer book and pretend that the moment with the clay never happened.
