James Joyce's short story, "Araby," from the collection Dubliners, is a classic coming of age tale. Set amongst the "somber" (Joyce, 1914, p.1) and decaying background of Dublin at the turn of the 20th century, the unnamed protagonist, awkwardly moving from childhood to adolescence, struggles with his idealized perception of love and romance. The boy's intention for love is directed at an older girl who lives on the same street; however, the romantic quest is misguided by his "blind" (Joyce, 1914, p. 1) and "confused adoration" (Joyce, 1914, p. 2). As the narrator anxiously awaits and finally makes a trip to the bazaar to buy a gift for the girl, the romanticized journey proves to signify the loss of innocence and utter disillusionment with love.
Araby opens with a look at the protagonist's residence, where a "priest...died in the back drawing room" (Joyce, 1914, pg.1). The narrator finds three books; two religious texts, and a murderer's memoir. This juxtaposition symbolizes the innocence of the religious books and the dark reality of the memoir. In the backyard, an apple tree stood in the center, along with a few bushes and a "rusty bicycle pump" (Joyce, 1914, p. 1). This backyard is an allegory of the biblical story of Adam and Eve; where the first two humans, whom were pure, took food from a forbidden apple tree as dictated by a serpent. Again,
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He proclaims that his "body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires" (Joyce, 1914, p. 2). Also, the narrator would follow her every morning until their paths diverged, often waiting for her to leave her house. Despite the two scarcely talking, they had a conversation about the bazaar, and the girl couldn't go to it. The narrator says, "'If I go,' I said, 'I will bring you something" (Joyce, 1914, p. 2). It seems that the boy has feelings for the girl, but the girl doesn't have feelings for
As soon as “Araby” begins, the religious allusions do also. Joyce immediately puts readers in a religious frame of mind as the narrator speaks of the Christian Brother’s School and the priest who formerly lived in his house. Shortly after a religious mindset is formed, the narrator speaks of “the wild garden behind the house [containing]
A person’s life is often a journey of study and learning from errors and mistakes made in the past. In both James Joyce’s Araby and John Updike’s A&P, the main characters, subjected to the events of their respective stories, are forced to reflect upon their actions which failed to accomplish their original goal in impressing another character. Evidently, there is a similar thematic element that emerges from incidents in both short stories, which show maturity as an arduous process of learning from failures and a loss of innocence. By analyzing the consequences of the interaction of each main character; the Narrator in Araby and Sammy in A&P; and their persons of infatuation, Mangan’s sister
The story “Araby” opens with a description of North Richmond Street. This gives reader the first view of the young boy's world. The Richmond Street “was a quiet street except.....the boys free” (Joyce 345). The young boy in “Araby” lives with his aunt a...
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 his short story “Araby”, James Joyce tells a story of a young boy’s infatuation with his friend’s sister, Mangan, and the issues that arise which ultimately extinguish his love for her. In his first struggle, the narrator admires Mangan’s outer beauty, however, “her name was like a summons to all his blood,” which made him embarrassed to talk with her (Joyce 318). Every day he would look under a curtain in the room and wait for her to walk outside so he could follow her to school, but then he would simply walk quickly by and never say anything to her (Joyce 318). In addition to his inability to share his feelings with Mangan, the boy allows difficulties to get in the way of his feelings for her. After struggling to get his uncle’s permission
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.
In the opening scenes of the story the reader gets the impression that the boy lives in the backwash of his city. His symbolic descriptions offer more detail as to what he thinks about his street. The boy says “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street [it’s houses inhabited with] decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (Joyce 984). This shows that the boy feels that the street and town have become conceited and unoriginal. While to young to comprehend this at the time the matured narrator states that he now realizes this. The boy is also isolated in the story because he mentions that when the neighborhood kids go and play he finds it to be a waste of time. He feels that there are other things he could be doing that playing with the other boys. This is where the narrator starts to become aware of the fact that not everything is what is seems. He notices the minute details but cannot quite put them together yet. As the story progresses one will see that th...
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).
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.
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.
The boy is haplessly subject to the city’s dark, despondent conformity, and his tragic thirst for the unusual in the face of a monotonous, disagreeable reality, forms the heart of the story. The narrator’s ultimate disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him and his eventual recognition and awareness of his own existence within that miserable setting. The gaudy superficiality of the bazaar, which in the boy’s mind had been an “oriental enchantment,” shreds away his protective blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love contrast sharply from his dream (Joyce). Just as the bazaar is dark and empty, flourishing through the same profit motivation of the market place, love is represented as an empty, fleeting illusion. Similarly, the nameless narrator can no longer view his world passively, incapable of continually ignoring the hypocrisy and pretension of his neighborhood. No longer can the boy overlook the surrounding prejudice, dramatized by his aunt’s hopes that Araby, the bazaar he visited, is not “some Freemason affair,” and by the satirical and ironic gossiping of Mrs. Mercer while collecting stamps for “some pious purpose” (Joyce). The house, in the same fashion as the aunt, the uncle, and the entire neighborhood, reflects people
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...
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...
I believe Araby employs many themes; the two most apparent to me are escape and fantasy though I see signs of religion and a boy's first love. Araby is an attempt by the boy to escape the bleak darkness of North Richmond Street. Joyce orchestrates an attempt to escape the "short days of winter", "where night falls early" and streetlights are but "feeble lanterns" failing miserably to light the somberness of the "dark muddy lanes"(Joyce 38). Metaphorically, Joyce calls the street blind, a dead end; much like Dublin itself in the mid 1890s when Joyce lived on North Richmond Street as a young boy. A recurrent theme of darkness weaves itself through the story; the boy hides in shadows from his uncle or to coyly catch a glimpse of his friend Mangan's sister who obliviously is his first love.
In many cultures, childhood is considered a carefree time, with none of the worries and constraints of the “real world.” In “Araby,” Joyce presents a story in which the central themes are frustration, the longing for adventure and escape, and the awakening and confusing passion experienced by a boy on the brink of adulthood. The author uses a single narrator, a somber setting, and symbolism, in a minimalist style, to remind the reader of the struggles and disappointments we all face, even during a time that is supposed to be carefree.