Araby Setting

Settings have always been the ‘within the scenes’ hero in many stories both old and new. From the Wall of China of Mulan’s story, the Blue Seas of One Piece, to the Reichenbach Falls of Sherlock Holmes’s ‘demise’ settings have been an ever important feature to any story. In James Joyce ‘Araby’ is a story concerning an adolescent’s sudden infatuation for a girl he just met, and how his own delusions set him up for an abrupt fall to reality of his pitiful state. Araby’s setting helped define its importance by describing how formative it was in the narrator’s early years and how it helped set the stage for the coming tensions within the plot. A character’s personality and temperament are not just affected by its squabbles with other characters,

For example take this excerpt from Araby on how badly the narrator and his family had it back in the day with his description of his home: “The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers.” (Joyce) The description of the setting helped cement the poor and hapless state of affairs the young boy was going through in the readers mind, and helped set the stage for the grand entry scene of his crush a little later in the story. Later in the story setting again is used to create a tension that involves the young boy’s wish to give a gift to his crush: “Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service.” (Joyce) In this description we find the setting once again in a dark place, to the point that the audible silence is used to set the tone for the coming failure in the young boy’s quest for a