“Araby” Lesson in Adolescence
In his brief but complex story "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies within 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 a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight tells the story in retrospect. 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 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 story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, a "blind," "cold ... .. silent" (275)street where the houses "gazed at one an-other with brown imperturbable faces.".(275) The former tenant, a priest, died in the back room of the house, and his legacy-several old yellowed books, which the boy enjoys leafing through because they are old, and a bicycle pump rusting in the back yard-become symbols of the intellectual and religious vitality of the past. Every morning before school the boy lies on the floor in the front parlor peeking out through a crack in the blind of the door, watching and waiting for the girl next door to emerge from her house and walk to school. He is shy and still boyish.
He follows her, walks silently past, not daring to speak, overcome with a confused sense of desire and adoration. In his mind she is both a saint to be worshipped and a woman to be desired. His eyes are "often full of tears.".(276) Walking with his aunt to shop on Saturday evenings he imagines that the girl's image accompanies him, and that he protects her in "places the most hostile to romance." (276) Here, Joyce reveals the epiphany in the story: "These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes."(276) He is unable to...
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... quest ends when he arrives at the bazaar and realizes with slow, tortured clarity that Araby is not at all what he imagined. It is tawdry and dark and thrives on the profit motive and the eternal lure its name evokes in men. The boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist except in his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception. He feels he is "a creature driven and derided by vanity" and the vanity is his own. At no other point in the story is characterization as brilliant as at the end. Joyce draws his protagonist with strokes designed to let us recognize in "the creature driven and derided by vanity" a boy who is initiated into knowledge through a loss of innocence who does not fully realize the incompatibility between the beautiful, innocent world of the imagination and the very real world of fact. In "Araby," Joyce uses the boyhood character with the manhood narrator to embody the theme of his story. Joyce, James. “Araby”. Literature and It’s Writers.
Works Cited:
Joyce, James . “Araby.” Literature: An Introduction to Writing. Roberts, Edgar V. and Jacobs,. Henry E. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001.
The protagonist of Araby is a young boy who is infatuated with his friend Mangan 's sister. The setting, and the introduction of the this woman is nearly identical to that in A&P. Joyce 's narrator spends his time “lay[ing] on the floor in the front parlour watching [Magnan 's sister 's] door” (Joyce 182). Immediately from the outset of the story, Joyce has rendered the narrator as someone who frivolously awaits his female interest with no other motivation. The main character then finally encounters Magnan 's sister personally, where she tells him about a bazaar near town called Araby. Joyce 's protagonist is shocked when Magnan 's sister “addresse[s] the first words to [him]” (Joyce 183) as he has spent a plethora of time yearning for an interaction with her. Joyce has implemented the idea into Araby that males are inherently reliant on females. Interestingly, Joyce has incorporated another male character in his story that is presented as inferior to his female counterpart. The purpose of the narrator 's uncle in the story is to slow the main character from going to Araby. The Uncle comes home much later than expected, and is chastised my his wife: “Can 't you give him the money and let him go? You 'v kept him late enough as it
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.
“Araby” tells the story of a young boy who romanticizes over his friend’s older sister. He spends a lot of time admiring the girl from a distance. When the girl finally talks to him, she reveals she cannot go to the bazaar taking place that weekend, he sees it as a chance to impress her. He tells her that he is going and will buy her something. The boy becomes overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform this chivalrous act for her, surely allowing him to win the affections of the girl. The night of the bazaar, he is forced to wait for his drunken uncle to return home to give him money to go. Unfortunately, this causes the boy to arrive at the bazaar as it is closing. Of the stalls that remained open, he visited one where the owner, and English woman, “seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty” (Joyce 89) and he knows he will not be able to buy anything for her. He decides to just go home, realizing he is “a creature driven and derided with vanity” (Joyce 90). He is angry with himself and embarrassed as he...
Besides the assassination of the archduke there were four other reasons for the start of WW1. 1. Militarism- the building of large armies. All the nations in Europe at that time were engaged in what today could only be called an arms race. As soon as one nation built a new weapon, all the others followed suit. 2. Alliance System- The building of alliances to strengthen the borders of a country. In theses alliances if one country went to war all the other countries in the alliance were forced to go to war also. 3. Imperialism- The practice of colonizing other lands by large European nations. 4.Nationalism- The feeling of Patriotism in a country that makes it compete with all other counties in the area in all areas.
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.
Joyce, James. “Araby.” Literature: The Human Experience. Abcarian, Richard et al.,. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010. 92-96
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.
In “Araby”, author James Joyce presents a male adolescent who becomes infatuated with an idealized version of a schoolgirl, and explores the consequences which result from the disillusionment of his dreams. While living with his uncle and aunt, the main character acts a joyous presence in an otherwise depressing neighborhood. In Katherine Mansfield’s, The Garden Party, Mansfield’s depicts a young woman, Laura Sherridan, as she struggles through confusion, enlightenment, and the complication of class distinctions on her path to adulthood. Both James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield expertly use the literary elements of characterization to illustrate the journey of self-discovery while both main characters recognize that reality is not what they previously conceptualized it as.
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...
Nichols, D. E., & Chemel, B. R. (2011). LSD and the serotonin system's effects on human
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.