In the short story “Araby” by James Joyce, a young adolescent boy becomes infatuated with his friends sister. An extravagant bazaar comes to town and the adolescent begins to look at the bazaar through a telescope reflecting the idea of romance. Joyce manages to tell a story of filled with innocence and self discovery through intricate detail, imagery, tone, and setting depicting emotional occurrences within the youth from beginning to end. “Araby” is the story of young love not flourishing as the heart would wish it too rather it is naïve and impossible. It is an overpowering experience that awakens the speaker out of his haze. The story in all actuality is more than that though; it is the story of a bittersweet memory painted vividly through specific decorum chosen to illuminate the experience of first love, step by step.
By writing the story in first person point of view, James Joyce lets the reader in on the speakers’ innermost thoughts through a limited omniscient point of view. This is pivotal to the story and the readers understanding of the story because the tone and mood of the speaker comes off clearer and becomes more relatable. As the young boy experiences his first major crush, his complete oblivion to what is going to be realized later on comes off as endearing and innocent to readers. Though the speaker is very innocent and can not see beyond his dreams and into reality of the situation, being that his feelings are quite common and insignificant, what he feels is real.
The boy tends to magnify every little detail intricately and though he may have unrealistic wishes and desires he still gains great satisfaction out of them. Joyce writes of the seemingly unimportant details within the story that trul...
... middle of paper ...
...t the quest can not truly be fulfilled. This leads to disappointment for the speaker. All of his hopes are knocked down when he realizes that his adolescent youth holds no power. The bazaar and the girl are simply unreachable. He is simply a young boy with nothing to offer her. James Joyce depicts his emotional state here as being “vain” and “anguish stricken.”
By the end of the story he feels letdown unsure why he is being faced with this reality, until it hits him that he has been unrealistic about his feelings for his friend’s sister, the reality is she is just another young girl, much like the girl that waited on him at the bazaar booth. As he realizes that his crush is no holy symbol but rather common he wonders why would his crush want to be with him, or for that matter, have anything to do with him? The speaker is brought to his moment, his epiphany.
“What makes the protagonist in “Araby” a lonely person? Has he gained anything from his journey?” Advances in Language and Literary Studies 4.2 (2013): 93-95. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 22 Oct. 2016. Ko argues that the narrator, the boy, is a lonely person. In his analysis of the story, he addresses the boy’s coming of age, and states that, “he exits the bazaar with the loss of idealized image of Mangan’s sister and love,” which is a claim I make in my third point. Ko also quotes and explains the line, “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger,” a quotation which I have marked out to use in my third paragraph. It will be beneficial to support my opinion of this moment with Ko’s, that it is “the outcome derived from the transition of ages between childhood and adolescence”
matter. However his need for her grew to the point where it surpassed everything around him. The speaker, who is guessed to be a younger man, “I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life..” (48), is conflicted to what is to be assumed a common thing for most boys. Yet in a passing glance through the storyline the reader can come to terms that this is no mere infatuation, it is a growing love affair.
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.
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.
First romantic encounters by young boys are often wrought with many different emotions and illusions. In “Araby”, a portrayal of a young boy’s experience of romantic reality, the reader is witness to the narrator’s physical, emotional and chronological journey. The emotional reactions, anguish and anger, show the importance of the events in the young boy’s life. The deprecating word vanity is significant to the story’s theme, because while anguish and anger are emotional reactions, the admission of vanity is a severe moral judgment of oneself. Anguish is regarded as the key emotion in the young boy’s childhood. In James Joyce’s “Araby”, the exaggerated anguish of the narrator seems quite pretentious given the reality of his youthful perception.
I noticed a lot of auditory imagery in "Araby" that helped to enhance the meaning of the story. The first is the description of the sound in the streets when the young man is walking by thinking of the girl he loves. He hears the "curses of laborers," the "shrill litanies of shop boys," and "nasal chantings of street singers." All of these images, besides just making the street seem busy, also make it seem like an unpleasant and intruding scene, almost like you would want to cover your ears and hurry through as fast as possible. This compliments perfectly the boy's imagination that he is "carrying his chalice safely through a throng of foes." In the scene where the boy is in the priest's house late at night, the auditory imagery helps contribute to the sense of drama. "There was no sound in the house," but outside boy heard the rain "impinge upon the earth" with "fine incessant needles of water." The choice of words here makes the rain seem almost as if it is hostile. You can hear the force and fury of the storm, and this makes the emotions the boy is feeling seem even more intense.
In the novel's opening story, "The Sisters," Joyce elevates this concern with writing "reality" from sub-theme to theme: the story is an extended meditation on textuality just as much as it is the story of a boy and a priest. By beginning with a metatext Joyce brilliantly opens up the entire collection for a different kind of reading, one based on noticing rather than overlooking literature's limitations. With...
Hunter, Cheryl. "The Coming Of Age Archetype In James Joyce's "Araby.." Eureka Studies In Teaching Short Fiction 7.2 (2007): 102-104. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
An intriguing yet commonplace subject in literature, childhood contains multiple themes—both subtle and blatant—that often illustrate a child's journey through and discovery of the world. Said themes include topics such as: love, loss of innocence, struggle with identity, and others. In one such story written by James Joyce, a few childhood themes are discussed through the lens of both direct and indirect characterization. Children playing in muddy alleyways, a profession of love in a veiled drawing-room, and a climax formed around the realization of blatant frustration all bring to light themes of epiphany, loss of childlike hope, and courtly infatuation with a young maiden in "Araby."
The short story “Araby” by James Joyce is told by what seems to be the first person point of view of a boy who lives just north of Dublin. As events unfold the boy struggles with dreams versus reality. From the descriptions of his street and neighbors who live close by, the reader gets an image of what the boy’s life is like. His love interest also plays an important role in his quest from boyhood to manhood. The final trip to the bazaar is what pushes him over the edge into a foreshadowed realization. The reader gets the impression that the narrator is the boy looking back on his epiphany as a matured man. The narrator of “Araby” looses his innocence because of the place he lives, his love interest, and his trip to the bazaar.
In her story, "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies inherent in self-deception. On one level "Araby" is a story of initiation, of a boy’s quest for the ideal. The quest ends in failure but results in an inner awareness and a first step into manhood. On another level the story consists of a grown man's remembered experience, for the story is told in retrospect by a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight. As such, the boy's experience is not restricted to youth's encounter with first love. Rather, it is a portrayal of a continuing problem all through life: the incompatibility of the ideal, of the dream as one wishes it to be, with the bleakness of reality. This double focus-the boy who first experiences, and the man who has not forgotten-provides for the dramatic rendering of a story of first love told by a narrator who, with his wider, adult vision, can employ the sophisticated use of irony and symbolic imagery necessary to reveal the story's meaning.
The visual and emblematic details established throughout the story are highly concentrated, with Araby culminating, largely, in the epiphany of the young unnamed narrator. To Joyce, an epiphany occurs at the instant when the essence of a character is revealed, when all the forces that endure and influence his life converge, and when we can, in that moment, comprehend and appreciate him. As follows, Araby is a story of an epiphany that is centered on a principal deception or failure, a fundamental imperfection that results in an ultimate realization of life, spirit, and disillusionment. The significance is exposed in the boy’s intellectual and emotional journey from first love to first dejection,
The boy sees the bazaar at Araby as an opportunity to win her over, as a way to light the candle in her eyes. However, the boy is more awkward then shy, his adolescence is an impediment to his quest and he lost for words to speak. I vividly recall those times in my young life, driven by desires and struggling with the lack of experience to get through the moment.
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.
Pope, Deborah. "The Misprision of Vision: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man". James Joyce. vol.1. ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. 113-19.