James Joyce's Araby: Infantilized With The Safety Of Adolescence

Infantilized with the Safety of Adolescence
Which each growth of self-discovery comes to an unearthing of childhood ignorance into adulthood dissatisfaction. In James Joyce’s short story Araby, an unnamed boy confronts this harsh discovery of reality. Joyce leaves the characters of the story virtually nameless as to convey anonymousness, allowing the reader to more easily place themselves into the character’s development. Set in Dublin, Araby entails of a dreary boy being infantilized with the safety of adolescence. Shortly after, the boy is teased with the mystique of love and undiscovered places as Joyce brilliantly intertwines this metaphor of vanity. In the allure of the bazaar and girl, a child’s innocence of looking for desires is thwarted with disappointment. Accordingly, with the squandering of virtuousness derives an altered outlook upon the world.

As detailed by Joyce, with North Richmond Street “being blind” with a neighborhood “conscious of decent lives within them, [that] gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces”. Thus, the quotation emphasizes the neighborhood casting a monotonous, unpromising life full of strenuous work. It is understood that the people of North Richmond street live a routine life, lacking excitement. Accordingly, the dead end street withholds the nameless boy’s home, which also possesses a lackluster household. The “cold empty gloomy rooms” encase an unfilled life for the boy. The unknowing child, however, attempts to escape from the despairing house to the child’s play of neighborhood. Making a “career” out of playing through the alleys, the children are unwitting to the dreary life Dublin holds for them. It is not until the discovery of optimistic withholdings, does the nameless boy grasp the opportunity of