"Araby" written by James Joyce is a short story about a young boy through his journey to adulthood. The story is in first person point of view. But it doesn’t give the impression that a boy is telling the story, instead the narrator gives a sense of being an adult. In his journey the boy falls in love with his friend's older sister and tries to impress her by going to a bazaar and buying her a gift. This will be the main plot of the short story. The author presents the setting and characters by using an extensive use of figurative language like imagery, symbolisms and metaphors through the essay. Figurative language is effectively use to help the readers imagine the feelings and situations of the characters. Joyce used of figurative language in the short story is to created a dramatic, vivid and interesting imagery than just using literal language. At the beginning the author use of imagery helps the reader get a sense and description of the street where he grew up and the house where he used to live. North Richmond Street is describe as blind, quiet and dark. The neighborhood is presented as isolated, detached and empty. "The other houses of the street, …show more content…
Joyce uses a few religious symbolism in the short story. First he writes " I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes". A chalice is the cup used in Christian ceremony, which can be a sacred symbol for the church. The author when describing the way the boy thinks of Mangan's sister uses the symbolism of a chalice to describe how much he worships her and how sacred she had become to him. Secondly he uses a religious symbolism to describe the admiration he has for the girl. "But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon wires" The harp being a religious instrument in comparison to an instrument of her
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Show More“Araby”, a story told by a mystery narrator that ensnares the reader in an interesting and complex line of desires and disappointments. The story starts as the sister of the speaker's friend becomes the object of the narrators affection. He attempts to dazzle her with a gift from the Araby bazaar which is brought in to depict the idea of breaking free of the convening Dublin neighborhood. Thus through the uneasy setting and diverse range of characters, James Joyce let's the reader know that the theme of the narrative is centered around the conflict of an individual and the refusal of the reality of the world around him.
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.
Joyce first reveals to readers how obsessed the narrator is with sacred allusions to a chalice and a prayer. The narrator tells readers he “imagined that [he] bore [his] chalice safely through a throng of foes” (598) as he remembers the girl when he is making his way through the crowded market. The chalice is a biblical reference to the cup from which Jesus drank during the Last Supper in Matthew 6. This sacred reference “elucidates the importance and value the boy places on the very name of his love” (Flynn). This allusion to the chalice allows readers to see how sacred the girl is to the young narrator. Shortly after this, while the narrator is in his room he “[presses] the palms of his hands together until they [tremble], murmuring: O love! O love!” (598). This semblance of prayer also shows how sacredly the narrator upholds the girl he likes. However, she soons tells him she cannot attend Araby, a bazaar, because “there would be a retreat that week in her convent” (598), making readers assume she is going to be a nun. If she is going to be a nun, then the narrator has no chance of dating or marrying her, and his obsession with her is pointless. Unfortunately, he does not come to realize this until the very end of the
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.
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.
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.
James Joyce's use of religious imagery and religious symbols in "Araby" is compelling. That the story is concerned somehow with religion is obvious, but the particulars are vague, and its message becomes all the more interesting when Joyce begins to mingle romantic attraction with divine love. "Araby" is a story about both wordly love and religious devotion, and its weird mix of symbols and images details the relationship--sometimes peaceful, sometimes tumultuos--between the two. In this essay, I will examine a few key moments in the story and argue that Joyce's narrator is ultimately unable to resolve the differences between them.
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...
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.
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,
How the Setting Reinforces the Theme and Characters in Araby. The setting in "Araby" reinforces the theme and the characters by using imagery of light and darkness. The experiences of the boy in James Joyce's The "Araby" illustrates how people often expect more than ordinary reality can. provide and then feel disillusioned and disappointed.
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 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).
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.