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Essays on symbolism in literature
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Being exposed to a world that you have never been to could be either a great or brutal experience. However, most of people would feel uncomfortable due to disjunction between ideals and reality because it is one of instincts that living organisms possess naturally. Epiphany is a moment of revelation and it is taking a crucial role in both “Araby” and “The garden party”. Both authors used epiphany to show the difference between the world that main characters live and the another world that they have never been exposed to. Contrast and symbolism are the main features that are being used to derive an epiphany in both stories. “Araby” is in a perspective of an unnamed boy residing on a house that a priest had died. Colours and visual imageries …show more content…
Epiphany of “The garden party” appears when Laura is exposed to the world that she has never been to.. “The garden party” is mostly in the perspective of Laura. Laura is a part of an upper class family that are planning to have a nice garden party to show off their splendid garden. “They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden party if they had ordered it” (Norton ENGL 2745). This line is a sarcasm which implies that how much power the high class people had back in the early 19’s. Laura is a feature that taking a role as an intermediate between the two different classes because unlike the rest of her family she can relate to both classes but each time she is exposed, a multiple different features bring her back to her world. The hat symbolize the cultural limitation and it shows the ignorance of wealthy people about lower class. “People like them don’t expect sacrifices from us” (Norton ENGL 2752). When Laura is deeply upset after hearing the accident, her mom gives her the hat. She looks herself in the mirror and forgets how she felt when she heard the news for the first time. Laura never rejects her hat, showing that she does not reject her place in her class. The Hat is used to criticizes the inaccessibility of wealthy class to lower class that even a hat could hide a death of …show more content…
Both characters are shocked by a disjunction between their world and the other like most of living organisms would. Encountering an epiphany could be either a brutal experience but still that would allow one to gain a different view of looking at the world from their previous
World War I and World II are basically the same, right? If so, Araby, written around WWI by James Joyce, and The Flash, written around WWII by Italo Calvino, are also the same, no? Indeed, these short stories have many similarities. At the same time, both stories have many differences. Thus, it is difficult to compare both stories when considering all the details. If the subject of comparison is more specific, such as epiphany, then more emphasis and effort can be put into the comparison. In Araby, the protagonist falls in love with a girl, but love deceives him. In his moment of epiphany, “[g]azing up into the darkness [he] saw [himself] as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and [his] eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 1). In The Flash, the protagonist suddenly grasps a reality, but only for an instant: “[He] stopped, blinked: [He] understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything. [He] didn’t understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd. And [he] started to laugh” (Calvino 1). The comparison between the epiphanies of both short stories reveals the relationship amongst the similarities and differences regarding theme, symbolism and setting.
...the future to see that his life is not ruined by acts of immaturity. And, in “Araby”, we encounter another young man facing a crisis of the spirit who attempts to find a very limiting connection between his religious and his physical and emotional passions. In all of these stories, we encounter boys in the cusp of burgeoning manhood. What we are left with, in each, is the understanding that even if they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, we can. These stories bind all of us together in their universal messages…youth is something we get over, eventually, and in our own ways, but we cannot help get over it.
The garden is the vehicle in which the narrator reveals her reluctance to leave behind the imaginary world of childhood and see the realities of the adult world. The evidence supporting this interpretation is the imagery of hiding. The narrator uses the garden to hide from reality and the changes of growing up. When she no longer can hide from reality, she tries to hide from herself, which leaves her feeling disillusioned and unsure of who she is.
The emotions throughout the society are shared with the individuals throughout their confusing times, and by their shared experiences. The times spent together of the characters brought the individuals closer together through the dark negative times, and through the light positive situations of society. The confusing part of peoples lives are brought together and are shown throughout the status of society. The stories of the “Encounter,” “Eveline,” and “The Dead” come together with similar experiences of situations of light and dark. The society bring the individuals closer together by shared times.
In James Joyce’s “Araby” a young boy living in a dark and grave world develops an obsessive adoration with an older girl who lives in his neighborhood and his devotion towards her ultimately forces him to make a promise to her he is incapable of keeping, resulting in a life changing epiphany.
In the story “Araby,” the boy has a negative view of the community. Many aspects of his life affect the way he sees the things around him. For example, because of his uncle, he is unable to reach the bazaar in time. This makes him angry and frustrated. Although the boy reminds his uncle about the bazaar, his uncle forgets and comes home very late and the boy says to himself, “I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten (25).” He teases the boy and tells him not to go, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” meaning working too hard with no fun makes you a boring person. Because all the boy’s desires are focused on his goal of getting the gift at the bazaar, he becomes frustrated. The boys’ uncle is one of the people the boy is around all the time; this frustration causes him to become very jittery and get irritated with the world around him. By things like the clock ticking it gradually drove him to just have to totally change his train of thought and just dwell on the girl and the boy thinks, “...
Marlow, in the novel "The Heart of Darkness," experiences an epiphany, or a dramatic moment in which a character intuitively grasps the essential nature or meaning of some situation.
In the short stories, “Paul’s Case” by Willa Carter and “Araby” by James Joyce, both the protagonists are infatuated with the idea of escaping the conventional routines in their daily lives. Their main goal is to obtain a more romantic, extravagant, glamourized life. For Paul, his dream of a glamorized life lies in distant New York. For the unnamed protagonist in “Araby”, he hopes to find his in Araby with the neighbor girl who he barely knows. They believe that by achieving this escape, they’ll find the pleasure and satisfaction they’ve been hoping for. Both the protagonists dream to find a romance in a world hostile to romance by escaping the reality that they live in.
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.
In “Araby”, James Joyce details the transition of a young Irish boy into his adolescence. Looking for love and excitement, the narrator becomes obsessed with pleasing his best friend’s sister, eventually ending up at a special festival to buy her a present. Disappointed by the bad- natured shopkeepers and its closing down, he reaches a frustrating epiphany about the fine line between reality and his wistful dreams. Through the use of fanciful imagery and detached characterization, Joyce demonstrates how romance belongs to the realm of the young, not the old, and that it is doomed to fail in a word flawed by materialism and a lack of beauty.
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.
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
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).
...om Joyce’s childhood. The young boy may have felt anguish, but the adult that looks back at himself sees someone who desires romance and happiness. Joyce explains “Araby” as the life of a young boy who has dreams and high expectations of the world, but instead the young boy gets a bitter taste of reality.
As childhood is the first stage in life, in Dubliners, Araby is projected as a short story in which the main character is striving for a love that can only be bought. The young boy symbolizes pure hope. He has exotic dreams to meet and be with this girl that he admires and loves. The pressure to get her attention blinds him and everything comes crashing down as the bazzar closes and he does not get a chance to buy her a gift. He was looking for guidance from his uncle, but his uncle is preoccupied getting drunk. At the bazzar the boy realizes that he has been blinded by love, and that his childhood dreams will never become a reality. In Araby, the epiphany occurs right at the end as he says: “gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Araby 28). These last sentences symbolize how crushed and hopeless he is, as well as his inability to move forward. Mangan’s sister represented ho...