Arby
James Joyce's use of religious imagery and religious symbols in "Araby" is compelling. That the story is concerned somehow with religion is obvious, but the particulars are vague, and its message becomes all the more interesting when Joyce begins to mingle romantic attraction with divine love. "Araby" is a story about both wordly love and religious devotion, and its weird mix of symbols and images details the relationship--sometimes peaceful, sometimes tumultuos--between the two. In this essay, I will examine a few key moments in the story and argue that Joyce's narrator is ultimately unable to resolve the differences between them.
While the story's concern with religion seems to speak for itself, a few biographical details bout Joyce's own youth and his religious background help inform any reading of "Araby." We know that he was both drawn to and repulsed by the Catholic church in Ireland, and that just before taking orders, he opted to give up a life in the church and chose instead to devote himself to writing fiction. In the end, Joyce saw the church as something confining, something that imposed rules rather than freeing a creative spirit. As a writer radically inclined to break the rules even of fiction, the rules of the church were too severe for him. We also know that Joyce was a very sensual person who wanted nothing to do with celibacy or abstinance; his youthful marauding in the brothels of Dublin suggests that the church's proscriptions of sexual, or even romantic, activity were also too much for him.
Some of these issues show up early on in the story "Araby." To begin with, the narrator--the voice of a young Joyce, surely, if not entirely autobiographical--lives in a house whose former t...
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...r, the boy has an epiphany--a sudden realization--while in the baazar: "gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity" (44). Ordinarily, epiphanies are religious moments characterized by a sudden "seeing of the light." Here, however, the boy reaches his ephiphany--as does the story--while gazing into the darkness at a baazar. If the baazar is initially opposed to religion, it is here explicitly likened to religion.
The ending of the story is almost as ambiguous as its back-and-forth treatment of religion and romance. It is not clear exactly what he has realized, nor is it clear whether there is a clear distinction between what is religious and what is romantic, between what is sacred and divine and what is worldly and base. But perhaps Joyce, in whom these two elements were equally confused, would have wanted it that way.
The protagonist of Araby is a young boy who is infatuated with his friend Mangan 's sister. The setting, and the introduction of the this woman is nearly identical to that in A&P. Joyce 's narrator spends his time “lay[ing] on the floor in the front parlour watching [Magnan 's sister 's] door” (Joyce 182). Immediately from the outset of the story, Joyce has rendered the narrator as someone who frivolously awaits his female interest with no other motivation. The main character then finally encounters Magnan 's sister personally, where she tells him about a bazaar near town called Araby. Joyce 's protagonist is shocked when Magnan 's sister “addresse[s] the first words to [him]” (Joyce 183) as he has spent a plethora of time yearning for an interaction with her. Joyce has implemented the idea into Araby that males are inherently reliant on females. Interestingly, Joyce has incorporated another male character in his story that is presented as inferior to his female counterpart. The purpose of the narrator 's uncle in the story is to slow the main character from going to Araby. The Uncle comes home much later than expected, and is chastised my his wife: “Can 't you give him the money and let him go? You 'v kept him late enough as it
Joyce, James. “Araby”. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Eds. R.V. Cassill and Richard Bausch. Shorter Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 427 - 431.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter Eighth Edition. Eds. Jerome Beaty, Alison Booth, J. Paul Hunter, and Kelly J. Mays. New York: W.W.Norton.
So it is understood that political freedom is a possibility in America. I have taken the understanding of de Tocqueville and Arendt and applied their principles and visions to formulate and understand where America is in the present and where America needs to head if political freedom is to become a reality. I understand that this vision, my own vision, is very rough and is vulnerable to much criticism, but it must be realized what potential exists in America. Arendt and Tocqueville have paved the road to political freedom; now it is up to the citizens to travel that road and obtain the freedom that founded our nation.
"Democracy may, after all, turn out to have been a historical accident, a brief parenthesis that is closing before our eyes." With those words, French philosopher Jean-Francois Revel sounded an alarm as the ramparts of democratic conviction were under attack by the political left. Revel, one of the most important conservative thinkers in France, saw European intellectuals and the political left in America undermining the very foundations of democracy.
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.
Enter Tocqueville. After visiting and evaluating America, Tocqueville claims, “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress” (Tocqueville, 8). The last part of this quote the key to unlock Tocqueville’s understanding of American democracy. America offered Tocqueville a clear picture of democracy, and in this clear picture of democracy Tocqueville was able to distinguish the value and the harm that comes with
Life is filled with loneliness and times when a person feels unsure. When these times arise is when most people turn to their faith in the church or faith in fate. Certain events in one’s life can send them reeling for something that they can find solace in. Security from the turbulent world is given through faith and hope. When times are at there hardest what can you do? Without faith you can get stuck, and slowly dragged down by the world decaying around you. In the story Araby by James Joyce you find what happens when you give up on faith. He also loses faith in romantic love, religious love, and material love. Evidence of this is found in the form of sexual, spiritual, and financial experiences throughout the story. The story is a more modern symbolism of the fall Of the Garden of Eden.
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...
Joyce, James. "Araby." 1914. Literature and Ourselves. Henderson, Gloria, ed. Boston, Longman Press. 2009. 984-988.
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.
He has grown up in the backwash of a dying city and has developed into an individual sensitive to the fact that his town’s vivacity has receded, leaving the faintest echoes of romance, a residue of empty piety, and symbolic memories of an active concern for God and mankind that no longer exists. Although the young boy cannot fully comprehend it intellectually, he feels that his surroundings have become malformed and ostentatious. He is at first as blind as his surroundings, but Joyce prepares us for his eventual perceptive awakening by mitigating his carelessness with an unconscious rejection of the spiritual stagnation of his community. Upon hitting Araby, the boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist outside of his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and comes to realize his self-deception, describing himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity”, a vanity all his own (Joyce). This, inherently, represents the archetypal Joycean epiphany, a small but definitive moment after which life is never quite the same. This epiphany, in which the boy lives a dream in spite of the disagreeable and the material, is brought to its inevitable conclusion, with the single sensation of life disintegrating. At the moment of his realization, the narrator finds that he is able to better understand his particular circumstance, but, unfortunately, this
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...
In the story of, "Araby" James Joyce concentrated on three main themes that will explain the purpose of the narrative. The story unfolded on North Richmond Street, which is a street composed of two rows of houses, in a desolated neighborhood. Despite the dreary surroundings of "dark muddy lanes" and "ash pits" the boy tried to find evidence of love and beauty in his surroundings. Throughout the story, the boy went through a variety of changes that will pose as different themes of the story including alienation, transformation, and the meaning of religion (Borey).
James Joyce, an Irish writer, is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century. Joyce was raised as a Catholic and attended a boarding school, Clongowes, run by Jesuits priests. Unfortunately, Joyce withdrew from school because of family debt. Joyce kept up his studies and was eventually able to attend University College in Dublin, also operated by Jesuits. By the time Joyce was in college he had had renounced Catholicism, mainly because of its unbending rules and strict enforcement of them. In many of his writing Joyce depicts the lives of Dubliners and subtly show religion as a big part of their lives. In his short story, “Araby,” Joyce depicts the values, aspirations, and habits of Irish Catholic Church.