A Comparison Of Araby And Eveline By J. Joyce

A Comparison of “Araby” and “Eveline” by J. Joyce Written by the same author, “Araby” and “Eveline” are very similar in several aspects, both formal and contextual. As they are taken from the same collection of the short stories, namely “Dubliners”, these works develop the same theme – the life of those living in Dublin, their joys and problems, their ups and downs; therefore, it is logical that they share many similarities which may be traced while analyzing the main characters, the plot peculiarities, the themes and the conflict, the mood and the tone etc. Everybody wants to escape from reality, but people are bound by the laws of society, social status and financial problems. The main characters of “Araby” and “Eveline” experience

However, the nature of this love is different in each story. In “Araby”, it is an innocent, pure, platonic feeling that completely changes the life of the character exerting an enormous influence on his psychological state. The boy has lost interest in everyday life. He cannot concentrate on his studying; he does not play with his friends; he can think about nothing else except for his beloved. For him, the lady is like a symbol of blissful happiness, a goddess; his love to her is sacred: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand” (108).It explains the strong feeling of the boy for the girl. With Eveline, the situation is different. It is difficult to say for sure whether she indeed loves Frank or not. She thinks about him only as about a person who will help her to achieve her aim. She does not feel any tenderness, any passion to him –any of those feelings that are associated with real love. For her, the young man is a means, although she does not consciously treat him like that. She praises his virtues seeing that Frank is “kind, manly, open-hearted” (3), that he is interesting as a personality; she is proud to be his beloved. Still, it seems that Eveline is not in love with him. She admits that “it had been an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him” (3). She is simply pleased to have a

Both “Araby” and “Eveline” are characterized by melancholic, even depressive mood. In the first case, the sadness associations are developed by the motifs of darkness and silence that reinforce the boy’s psychological state. The boy says that “All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves” (108) which means that he wants to become invisible, to disappear, and darkness and silence are helpful for him alleviating his pain: “I was thankful that I could see so little” (108). In “Eveline”, the mood is also melancholic and depressive, but this time the feeling of melancholy is combined with nostalgia and a fear of the uncertain future. It reveals itself in Eveline’s memories of her deceased mother, her brothers, her friends, in her looking at the things associated with her previous life: “Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided” (1). And what concerns the tone, in both “Araby” and “Eveline” it may be described as serious though not solemn as the narration lacks too eloquent expressions, and the context concerns more daily routine than some elevated