Cassidy-Payson 9
Life?s Cruelty in James Joyce?s ?Araby? While reading James Joyce?s ?Araby? you can see very vivid settings, characters and you can also find a lot of symbols with different meanings. In ?Araby? Joyce uses Ireland during the early 20th century as the setting of the story during a time that Ireland was a very dark and depressing place. Through Joyce?s use of symbols, unique characters and settings he captures how life can be dark and cruel at times. Joyce is able to describe the setting in this story due to the fact that he grew up in Ireland on North Richmond Street where a majority of the story takes place in. In the beginning of the story the main character finds himself in love with a girl that he has only looked
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the setting plays a huge role in portraying the mood of the story and shows the mood of Ireland and the boy. James Joyce has such vivid descriptions when making the setting of the story due to the fact that he grew up in Ireland on North Richmond Street where the majority of the story takes place. North Richmond Street, which Joyce describes by writing that ?North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers? School set the boys free.?3 The layout that Joyce describes ?? consists of a row of houses on either side, forming a rectangle, so that the vacant house at the end ?? detached from its neighbors in a square ground,? serves as the removed portion of a gnomonic parallelogram whose flawed remainder will be the setting of the story.?4 In the story Joyce describes the street as ?brown? which can be seen as the color of decay.5 In the boy?s house he finds a room in which the previous tenant, a priest, left many yellowing books that the boy would read in his spare time. The fact that he describes the books as yellowing can be as another color for decay. Another big part of the setting in ?Araby? was the bazaar. The bazaar was seen by the boy as the final destination to finally winning over the girl of his dreams but when he arrives there it is not what he imagined. When the boy arrives at the bazaar it is dark and nearly all the shops are closed which causes him to realize that life does not always work out. The boy …show more content…
From his dreams he is able to go to a place where he is happy and can leave the outside world where he sees as sad.21 The reason that the boy thinks about her all the time is due to him not having anything else in his life to make him happy. However, because it is the only thing that makes him happy he does it so much that over time that it morphs who she really is. In the end the girl is so far from who she really is that she can be seen as more fiction than fact.22 When the boy finally realizes what he had done at the bazaar he is hit with cold hard reality and is angered that he did this to
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Show MoreDublin 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 story begins as the boy describes his neighborhood. Immediately feelings of isolation and hopelessness begin to set in. The street that the boy lives on is a dead end, right from the beginning he is trapped. In addition, he feels ignored by the houses on his street. Their brown imperturbable faces make him feel excluded from the decent lives within them. The street becomes a representation of the boy’s self, uninhabited and detached, with the houses personified, and arguably more alive than the residents (Gray). Every detail of his neighborhood seems designed to inflict him with the feeling of isolation. The boy's house, like the street he lives on, is filled with decay. It is suffocating and “musty from being long enclosed.” It is difficult for him to establish any sort of connection to it. Even the history of the house feels unkind. The house's previous tenant, a priest, had died while living there. He “left all his money to institutions and the furniture of the house to his sister (Norton Anthology 2236).” It was as if he was trying to insure the boy's boredom and solitude. The only thing of interest that the boy can find is a bicycle pump, which is rusty and rendered unfit to play with. Even the “wild” garden is gloomy and desolate, containing but a lone apple tree and a few straggling bushes. It is hardly the sort of yard that a young boy would want. Like most boys, he has no voice in choosing where he lives, yet his surroundings have a powerful effect on him.
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...
A love sick, or obsessed, boy? Or a little bit of both? Either way, James Joyce's story, Araby, is about growing up, and how things do not always turn out how we would like, or expect them to. The main character, a young boy, seems to be about twelve or thirteen years of age. He lives on a dead end street with his aunt and uncle in the Irish city of Dublin. The author is constantly using imagery to convey how mundane the young boys life is, and how dark it is living in Dublin. An example of Joyces word choice to create a dull image would be the line through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens
...the future to see that his life is not ruined by acts of immaturity. And, in “Araby”, we encounter another young man facing a crisis of the spirit who attempts to find a very limiting connection between his religious and his physical and emotional passions. In all of these stories, we encounter boys in the cusp of burgeoning manhood. What we are left with, in each, is the understanding that even if they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, we can. These stories bind all of us together in their universal messages…youth is something we get over, eventually, and in our own ways, but we cannot help get over it.
Throughout “Araby”, the main character experiences a dynamic character shift as he recognizes that his idealized vision of his love, as well as the bazaar Araby, is not as grandiose as he once thought. The main character is infatuated with the sister of his friend Mangan; as “every morning [he] lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door…when she came on the doorstep [his] heart leaped” (Joyce 108). Although the main character had never spoken to her before, “her name was like a summons to all [his] foolish blood” (Joyce 108). In a sense, the image of Mangan’s sister was the light to his fantasy. She seemed to serve as a person who would lift him up out of the darkness of the life that he lived. This infatuation knew no bounds as “her image accompanied [him] even in places the most hostile to romance…her name sprang to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he] did not understand” (Joyce 109). The first encounter the narrator ex...
“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...
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.
It has been such a joy reading “The Norton Introduction to Literature” by Kelly J. Mays. Of all the stories that I was assigned to read, one story in particular stood out to me because of how the author used words to create a vivid image in my mind. The story I’m talking about is “Araby” by James Joyce. James Joyce does a great job creating vivid images in the readers mind and creates a theme that most of us can relate. In this paper I will be discussing five scholarly peer reviewed journals that also discusses the use of image and theme that James Joyce created in his short story “Araby”. Before I start diving into discussing these five scholarly peer review journals, I would like to just write a little bit about “Araby” by James Joyce. James Joyce is an Irish writer, mostly known for modernist writing and his short story “Araby” is one of fifteen short stories from his first book that was published called “Dubliners”. Lastly, “Araby” is the third story in Dubliners. Now I will be transitioning to discussing the scholarly peer review journals.
In "Araby," Joyce works from a "visionary mode of artistic creation"-a phrase used by psychiatrist Carl Jung to describe the, “visionary" kind of literary creation that derives its material from “the hinterland of man's mind-that suggests the abyss of time sepa-rating us from prehuman ages, or evokes a superhuman world of con-trasting light and darkness. It is a primordial experience, which sur-passes man's understanding and to which he is therefore in danger of succumbing." 1 Assuredly this describes Joyce's handling of the material of "Araby." The quest itself and its consequences surpass the understanding of the young protagonist of the story. He can only "feel" that he undergoes the experience of the quest and naturally is con-fused, and at the story's conclusion, when he fails, he is anguished and angered. His "contrasting world of light and darkness" contains both the lost spirituality and the dream of restoring it. Because our own worlds contain these contrasts we also "feel," even though the primordial experience surpasses our understanding, too.
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.
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,
At the beginning of “Araby,” the narrator’s young self is stuck in a dreary old neighbourhood and believes that there is more for him out there; however what he does not realise just yet is that this is what reality looks like. The story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, where the boy lives with his aunt and uncle. His neighbourhood is described as a “blind,” street with “brown imperturbable faces (287)” resembling that of those who live there. Only the boy companions "glow (287)"; they are still too young to have succumbed to the spiritual decay of the adults of Dublin. Everywhere in his dark surroundings the boy seeks the "light (287)." For example, he looks for light in the room of his home where the former tenant, a priest, had died, but the only objects left by the priest were books, yellow and...
The narrator alienated himself from friends and family which caused loneliness and despair, being one of the first themes of the story. He developed a crush on Mangan's sister, who is somewhat older than the boys, however he never had the confidence to confess his inner-most feelings to her. Mentally, he began to drift away from his childlike games, and started having fantasies about Mangan's sister in his own isolation. He desperately wanted to share his feelings, however, he didn't know how to explain his "confused adoration." (Joyce 390). Later in the story, she asked him if he was going to Araby, the bazaar held in Dublin, and he replied, "If I go I will bring you something.' (Joyce 390). She was consumed in his thoughts, and all he could think about was the upcoming bazaar, and his latest desire. The boy's aunt and uncle forgot about the bazaar and didn't understand his need to go, which deepened the isolation he felt (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.