The Sisters and An Encounter

Like the two previous stories, The Sisters and An Encounter, Araby is

about a somewhat introverted boy fumbling toward adulthood with little

in the way of guidance from family or community. The truants in An

Encounter managed

A young boy who is similar in age and temperament to those in “The

Sisters” and “An Encounter” develops a crush on Mangan’s sister, a

girl who lives across the street. One evening she asks him if he plans

to go to a bazaar (a fair organized, probably by a church, to raise

money for charity) called Araby. The girl will be away on a retreat

when the bazaar is held and therefore unable to attend. The boy

promises that if he goes he will bring her something from Araby.

The boy requests and receives permission to attend the bazaar on

Saturday night. When Saturday night comes, however, his uncle returns

home late, possibly having visited a pub after work. After much

anguished waiting, the boy receives money for the bazaar, but by the

time he arrives at Araby, it is too late. The event is shutting down

for the night, and he does not have enough money to buy something nice

for Mangan’s sister anyway. The boy cries in frustration.

Like the two previous stories, “The Sisters” and “An Encounter,”

“Araby” is about a somewhat introverted boy fumbling toward adulthood

with little in the way of guidance from family or community. The

truants in “An Encounter” managed to play hooky from school without

any major consequences; no one prevented them from journeying across

town on a weekday or even asked the boys where they were going.

Similarly, the young protagonist of this story leaves his house after

nine o’clock at night, when “people are in bed and after their first

sleep,” and travels thr...

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... anger.” The

eyes of Joyce’s readers burn, too, as they read this.

One final point: Though all are written from the first-person

point-of-view, or perspective, in none of the first three stories in

Dubliners is the young protagonist himself telling the story, exactly.

It is instead the grown-up version of each boy who recounts “The

Sisters,” “An Encounter,” and “Araby.” This is shown by the language

used and the insights included in these stories. A young boy would

never have the wisdom or the vocabulary to say “I saw myself as a

creature driven and derided by vanity.” The man that the boy grew

into, however, is fully capable of recognizing and expressing such a

sentiment. Joyce’s point-of-view strategy thereby allows the reader to

examine the feelings of his young protagonists while experiencing

those feelings in all their immediate, overwhelming pain.