Araby Perspective

The perspective taken in “Araby” by James Joyce is one of nostalgia and reminiscing because it is being told from the future in a manner that idealizes the past, as it fondly tells of positive and dramaticized aspects of the narrator’s childhood. The reader is placed into the first person narrative of a pubescent boy who becomes infatuated with the sister of his friend. Despite the fact that the narrator is coming from a reminiscent perspective, due to his being the boy as an adult, James Joyce effectively uses elements of idealization when it comes to his perception of the girl, the bazaar, and his own emotions to demonstrate that this experience was a pivotal time in his life. Throughout the short story, Joyce offers up the boy’s perspective

This is further demonstrated as the narrator is looking back on his pubescent self and embellishing and exaggerating his expressions in order to poke fun at his dramatic adolescent response to the situation not working out. Before she interacts with him in a real conversation, the boy finds himself calling out into his favorite abandoned home “O love! O love! many times” (ln. 62-63). When he was not able to watch for the girl in the window to follow her to school, it caused him to be “in bad humor” and his “heart misgave [him]” (ln. 94-96). He calls the train’s delay “intolerable” (ln. 131). These all display a highly self-centered motivation that is extremely sensitive to the slightest disturbance in his expectations. Yet, nothing screams exaggeration for the purpose of poking fun at oneself as much as the final line of “Araby”: Gazing up into the darkness, I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger (ln. 171-172). The narrator is describing anguish regarding a closed store. He says that, as a young adolescent, he saw himself as a creature, ridding himself of the humane aspect, motivated by and ridiculed by his own self interest. All of these emotions regard the importance of the idealized perspective we receive through the first-person