In his story "Araby," James Joyce portrays Dublin and its people in a negative light. "Dubliners" is a book written by the controversial Irish writer, and it was published in 1914, although the various stories in it were written between 1904 and 1907. Joyce rejected Christianity, his family, and Ireland, his country. He left Ireland in 1904 to live in Switzerland, where he began to write "Dubliners." Joyce also rejected Irish literature, and his favorite writers were Chekov, Ibsen, and Zola. His hero was Charles Parnell, an Irish politician who advocated for Home rule for the Irish, but unfortunately, he did not achieve it. All of the streets mentioned in "Araby" are real streets in Dublin. Joyce begins "Araby" by saying that North Richmond Street is "blind," implying that there's no vision on all of Dublin's streets, and there's no escape from them. The Christian Brother's School mentioned in "Araby" is a school for poor children, and James says that the children are imprisoned in the school. All of Dublin's streets are made to sound dirty and derelict. The empty house was neglected and not cared for, and there is a damp atmosphere inside the house, with rubbish all over it. Joyce only makes negative comments about Dublin and implies that the city has no culture or love of literature. When the boy makes it to "Araby," the bazaar is already over, and he enters a stall to see if he can find a suitable present for Mangan's sister. At the stall, there is a woman and two men, and they are talking in a very flirtatious manner.
Dublin to the speaker is nothing more than a constant bother in his life. James Joyce discusses Dublin, Ireland as being a very lack luster and tight nit city as he says the area “stood at the blind end” (Joyce 2). Which isn't the first time James Joyce went into detail regarding Dublin and all its wonders. His narratives are at a constant repetition regarding this neighborhood. He depicts this fulfilling need when he discusses the “Araby” and the desire for Mangan's sister. Through out the narrative the speaker is stuck with the need to see her or hear her, he often conflicts with himself and those around him on whether or not to pursue the
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.”
Joyce seems to be trying to get the reader to understand that Dublin is a
seems in vain. "I had never spoken to her ... and yet her name was like a
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]
The introduction of Joyce's Araby immediately creates a dark, mundane setting for the story. The repetition of the word "blind" introduces the theme of light and darkness. The streets of Dublin are described as "being blind"(2236) suggesting they do not lead anywhere. The houses are personified as being sombre and having "brown imperturbable faces"(2236), creating the shift from a literal setting to a state of mind. The streets remain silent until the boys are set free from school (2236), comparing the school to a prison: mundane and repetitive, and comparing their departure from school to a type of li...
While the story's concern with religion seems to speak for itself, a few biographical details bout Joyce's own youth and his religious background help inform any reading of "Araby." We know that he was both drawn to and repulsed by the Catholic church in Ireland, and that just before taking orders, he opted to give up a life in the church and chose instead to devote himself to writing fiction. In the end, Joyce saw the church as something confining, something that imposed rules rather than freeing a creative spirit. As a writer radically inclined to break the rules even of fiction, the rules of the church were too severe for him. We also know that Joyce was a very sensual person who wanted nothing to do with celibacy or abstinance; his youthful marauding in the brothels of Dublin suggests that the church's proscriptions of sexual, or even romantic, activity were also too much for him.
James Joyce began his writing career in 1914 with a series of realistic stories published in a collection called The Dubliners. These short literary pieces are a glimpse into the ‘paralysis’ that those who lived in the turn of the century Ireland and its capital experienced at various points in life (Greenblatt, 2277). Two of the selections, “Araby” and “The Dead” are examples of Joyce’s ability to tell a story with precise details while remaining a detached third person narrator. “Araby” is centered on the main character experiencing an epiphany while “The Dead” is Joyce’s experiment with trying to remain objective. One might assume Joyce had trouble with objectivity when it concerned the setting of Ireland because Dublin would prove to be his only topic. According the editors of the Norton Anthology of Literature, “No writer has ever been more soaked in Dublin, its atmosphere, its history, its topography. He devised ways of expanding his account of the Irish capital, however, so that they became microcosms of human history, geography, and experience.” (Greenblatt, 2277) In both “Araby” and “The Dead” the climax reveals an epiphany of sorts that the main characters experience and each realize his actual position in life and its ultimate permanency.
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
The first and most obvious theme that Joyce develops throughout the story is the staunch devotion to religion, especially Catholicism. Growing up in the mostly Catholic city of Dublin, the narrator was born with a deep dedication to Catholicism. The narrator experiences his religion everyday when he attends a Jesuit boarding school, plays in a Catholic city, and comes home to a devout family. Although the main character does not seem opposed to his faith, he tends to channel his emotional devotion to his friend Magnan’s sister, instead of the commonly accepted religious figures. The theme of religion also continues when the narrator describes the recently deceased tenant to the reader. That tenant was a lonely and studious priest that was always reading and rarely left his study. After the Priest’s death, the narrator finds three books that belonged to the deceased tenant. Two of them are personal downtime books about romance and memoirs, but the last one was a pretty substantial book about religious doctrines written by a Franciscan friar (Barnhisel).
Joyce, James. Dubliners. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Portable James Joyce. Harry Levin, ed. Penguin. 1976, New York. Ulysses. Vintage, New York. 1961.
in Araby Ireland. He chooses this gloomy setting to be the home of a young boy
"Araby" is a short complex story by Joyce that I believe is a reflection of his own life as a boy growing up in Dublin. Joyce uses the voice of a young boy as a narrator; however the narrator seems much more mature then the boy in the story. The story focuses on escape and fantasy; about darkness, despair, and enlightenment: and I believe it is a retrospective of Joyce's look back at life and the constant struggle between ideals and reality.
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).
The setting of the story plays a very important role. The story takes place in the winter, traditionally considered to be a time of darkness and nature’s slumber. The location is Dublin, under English rule at the time the story takes place. In his opening sentence, Joyce offers a view of North Richmond Street, described as a “blind” street. The symbolism of the “dead-end” street seems purposeful, and is quite effective, particularly as the story progresses. The description of the house the protagonist lives in provides the reader with the information that the family’s finances are lower-middle-class. This element plays an important part, as conflicts are introduced.