A Lost Innocence: Religious Allusions in James Joyce’s “Araby”
In the short story “Araby,” James Joyce uses religious and biblical allusions to portray a young narrator’s feelings about a girl. Through these allusions, readers gather an image of the narrator’s adoration of his friend’s, Mangan’s, sister. James Joyce’s allusions to the Bible and religion relate to the idolized image the narrator has of a girl. As soon as “Araby” begins, the religious allusions do also. Joyce immediately puts readers in a religious frame of mind as the narrator speaks of the Christian Brother’s School and the priest who formerly lived in his house. Shortly after a religious mindset is formed, the narrator speaks of “the wild garden behind the house [containing]
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Joyce first reveals to readers how obsessed the narrator is with sacred allusions to a chalice and a prayer. The narrator tells readers he “imagined that [he] bore [his] chalice safely through a throng of foes” (598) as he remembers the girl when he is making his way through the crowded market. The chalice is a biblical reference to the cup from which Jesus drank during the Last Supper in Matthew 6. This sacred reference “elucidates the importance and value the boy places on the very name of his love” (Flynn). This allusion to the chalice allows readers to see how sacred the girl is to the young narrator. Shortly after this, while the narrator is in his room he “[presses] the palms of his hands together until they [tremble], murmuring: O love! O love!” (598). This semblance of prayer also shows how sacredly the narrator upholds the girl he likes. However, she soons tells him she cannot attend Araby, a bazaar, because “there would be a retreat that week in her convent” (598), making readers assume she is going to be a nun. If she is going to be a nun, then the narrator has no chance of dating or marrying her, and his obsession with her is pointless. Unfortunately, he does not come to realize this until the very end of the
To understand the depiction of the Arab Muslim woman in William Beckford’s Vathek and in its contemporary Oriental fictions, we need, at the beginning, to trace her development in the Western fiction long before the 18th century. This chapter examines the representations of Arab Muslim woman in Western literary texts , covering the period from the eleventh century to the seventeenth century ,and examines how these representations pave the way to her representation in the eighteenth century, and to what extent Vathek’s women can be recognized in them.
In Diamant’s powerful novel The Red Tent the ever-silent Dinah from the 34th chapter of Gensis is finally given her own voice, and the story she tells is a much different one than expected. With the guiding hands of her four “mothers”, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, all the wives of Jacob, we grow with Dinah from her childhood in Mesoptamia through puberty, where she is then entered into the “red tent”, and well off into her adulthood from Cannan to Egypt. Throughout her journey we learn how the red tent is constantly looked upon for encouragement, solace, and comfort. It is where women go once a month during menstration, where they have their babies, were they dwell in illness and most importantly, where they tell their stories, passing on wisdom and spinning collective memories. “Their stories were like the offerings of hope and strength poured out before the Queen of Heavens, only these gifts were not for any god or goddess—but for me” (3). It essentially becomes a symbol of womanly strength, love and learning and serves as the basis for relationships between mothers, sisters, and daughters.
Hunter, Cheryl. "The Coming Of Age Archetype In James Joyce's "Araby.." Eureka Studies In Teaching Short Fiction 7.2 (2007): 102-104. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
She shares how she was clearly shown that that God is triune, that Jesus is the only way to God, that the Bible is God’s true Word, and that God did, indeed, want to be her Father. She shares the heartbreak of being ignored and shunned by her family (the most important unit in Islamic society), but also the goodness of God in providing her with so much more spiritual family—brothers and sisters in Christ—than the natural family she lost. She tells how her relationships with her servants changed, and how she was led to give up her comfortable house, her lovely gardens, and her privacy and leisure time for the sake of
The short story “Araby” by James Joyce is told by what seems to be the first person point of view of a boy who lives just north of Dublin. As events unfold the boy struggles with dreams versus reality. From the descriptions of his street and neighbors who live close by, the reader gets an image of what the boy’s life is like. His love interest also plays an important role in his quest from boyhood to manhood. The final trip to the bazaar is what pushes him over the edge into a foreshadowed realization. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is the boy looking back on his epiphany as a matured man. The narrator of “Araby” looses his innocence because of the place he lives, his love interest, and his trip to the bazaar.
Anita Diamant’s novel The Red Tent is a Midrash revolved around the biblical passage of Genesis 34: Dinah and the Shechemites. In this story Anita Diamant gives a voice to Simeon and Levi’s sister, Dinah, who is known as the woman who was raped then later loved by Shechem. After Shechem’s injustice of Dinah, Shechem and his city were slaughtered by Simeon and Levi. Both bible passages and the novel The Red Tent provide some similar and some different characteristic traits for Simeon and Levi which in turn allows the readers to take away and learn more from the Midrash story. The readers are able to further involve themselves in the relevance of Dinah’s voice and story. Even though Simeon and Levi are separate individuals, for the purpose of this character analysis, I will be treating Simeon and Levi’s character aspects as of one character. Because the character of Simeon and Levi in the bible were described as cruel but nevertheless righteous whereas in Anita Diamant’s novel, The Red Tent, they are cruel, unrighteous and deceitful; the differences and similarities of their characters are easily brought forth which in turn enabled Anita Diamant to provide Dinah’s story with more relevance and implication.
The narrator alienated himself from friends and family which caused loneliness and despair, being one of the first themes of the story. He developed a crush on Mangan's sister, who is somewhat older than the boys, however he never had the confidence to confess his inner-most feelings to her. Mentally, he began to drift away from his childlike games, and started having fantasies about Mangan's sister in his own isolation. He desperately wanted to share his feelings, however, he didn't know how to explain his "confused adoration." (Joyce 390). Later in the story, she asked him if he was going to Araby, the bazaar held in Dublin, and he replied, "If I go I will bring you something.' (Joyce 390). She was consumed in his thoughts, and all he could think about was the upcoming bazaar, and his latest desire. The boy's aunt and uncle forgot about the bazaar and didn't understand his need to go, which deepened the isolation he felt (Borey).
Although “Araby” is a fairly short story, author James Joyce does a remarkable job of discussing some very deep issues within it. On the surface it appears to be a story of a boy's trip to the market to get a gift for the girl he has a crush on. Yet deeper down it is about a lonely boy who makes a pilgrimage to an eastern-styled bazaar in hopes that it will somehow alleviate his miserable life. James Joyce’s uses the boy in “Araby” to expose a story of isolation and lack of control. These themes of alienation and control are ultimately linked because it will be seen that the source of the boy's emotional distance is his lack of control over his life.
The theme of light and darkness is apparent throughout Joyce's Araby. The dark, sombre setting of the story creates a sense of hopelessness within the narrator, an unnamed young boy. The negative connotations associated with the city of Dublin are used to illustrate the narrator's state of hopelessness. It is only through his illusions that he is able to catch a glimpse of light amidst the darkness.
The visual and emblematic details established throughout the story are highly concentrated, with Araby culminating, largely, in the epiphany of the young unnamed narrator. To Joyce, an epiphany occurs at the instant when the essence of a character is revealed, when all the forces that endure and influence his life converge, and when we can, in that moment, comprehend and appreciate him. As follows, Araby is a story of an epiphany that is centered on a principal deception or failure, a fundamental imperfection that results in an ultimate realization of life, spirit, and disillusionment. The significance is exposed in the boy’s intellectual and emotional journey from first love to first dejection,
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
The narrator in “Araby” is a young man who lives in an uninteresting area and dreary house in Dublin. The only seemingly exciting thing about the boy’s existence is the sister of his friend Mangum that he is hopelessly in love with; “…her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 2279) In an attempt to impress her and bring some color into his own gray life, he impulsively lies to her that he is planning on attending a bazaar called Arab. He also promises the gi...
I believe Araby employs many themes; the two most apparent to me are escape and fantasy though I see signs of religion and a boy's first love. Araby is an attempt by the boy to escape the bleak darkness of North Richmond Street. Joyce orchestrates an attempt to escape the "short days of winter", "where night falls early" and streetlights are but "feeble lanterns" failing miserably to light the somberness of the "dark muddy lanes"(Joyce 38). Metaphorically, Joyce calls the street blind, a dead end; much like Dublin itself in the mid 1890s when Joyce lived on North Richmond Street as a young boy. A recurrent theme of darkness weaves itself through the story; the boy hides in shadows from his uncle or to coyly catch a glimpse of his friend Mangan's sister who obliviously is his first love.
Birth and death in the Arab culture has being one of the most interesting topics that is being discussed more frequently. When people talk or hear about the Arab culture they tend to think about different things about them like they are being considered as terrorist, they oppress their women and many things like that. But we tend to forget that this people, the Arabs are also human beings that they have normal day-to-day activities like people in the other part of the so-called westernized world.
In many cultures, childhood is considered a carefree time, with none of the worries and constraints of the “real world.” In “Araby,” Joyce presents a story in which the central themes are frustration, the longing for adventure and escape, and the awakening and confusing passion experienced by a boy on the brink of adulthood. The author uses a single narrator, a somber setting, and symbolism, in a minimalist style, to remind the reader of the struggles and disappointments we all face, even during a time that is supposed to be carefree.