A contradiction between reality and the imaginary in Joyce’s “Araby” and Ross’s “One’s a Heifer”

Point of view is a main aspect of a story. It can tell the view of a story from a first-person, second-person, or a third-person angle. A first-person point of view is when a character narrates the story, the author allowing the reader to hear the person’s thoughts, and visioning the world through their eyes. A second-person point of view is when the author speaks directly to the reader. A third-person point of view is of an outside character looking in at the action – meaning either one or multiple character’s thoughts can be shown, but are written from the narrator’s text, not from the character themselves. With these different points of views, the mood for the reader can be set throughout the entire story, helping to understand the setting, theme, and other part/components of the tale. In the short stories “Araby” by James Joyce and “One’s a Heifer” by Sinclair Ross, they have a similar theme. For the main characters, their courses of action are driven by the contradiction between reality and a hallucinatory world.

In Joyce’s “Araby,” the point of view is first-person, told from the main character, an unnamed boy. Joyce portrays the thoughts of this boy well, showing his strong, passionate feelings for his friend Mangan’s sister. The reader learns that Mangan’s sister is from an eastern descent, keeping “her brown figure always in [his] eye,” and that this is one of the main components the boy likes about her (cite). She fascinates him, hardly able to talk whenever in her presence. When he does speak, it is about going to Araby, a bazaar in Dublin. She explains how she will not be able to attend, “because there would be a retreat that week in her convent” (cite). The boy states that he will go, and that he will buy her somethi...

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..., the boy not being allowed to go into the one stable, as it “has a hole in the floor – that’s why I keep the door closed. If you don’t know, you might step into it…” (Cite). The boy asks to stay for food before leaving on his way. The man agrees, but not before looking at the boy with an “intent scrutiny that it seemed he must discover [his] designs” (cite). The man, now known as Arthur Vickers, feeds the boy. The boys notes to himself Vickers seems guilty, and on edge. Vickers exclaims how he is lonely living on his own, but that he had a lady cook meals for him not long ago: “Just a cow she was – just a big stupid cow” and explains to the boy how “you're not yourself – you're not sure what you're going to say or do,” when living on your own (Cite). Throughout the night, Vickers plays checkers with himself, seeming as though he was playing with another character.