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Araby, By James Joyce Essay

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James Joyce’s, Araby, is an emotional short story that centers around a nameless boy living in Dublin, with his aunt and uncle, who has a consuming crush on his friend’s sister. His love for her leads him to the Araby bazaar, and there he comes to a realization about his immature actions. This event is the basis for the entire story, but the ideas Joyce promotes with this story revolve around the boy’s reactions to his feelings about his crush. Joyce spends much of the story describing the boy’s thoughts on the area in which he lives and similarly how he feels about the life he has lived thus far. He builds up the boy’s disgust for the simple facets of his daily life and how he feels bored with where he lives and what he does. In contrast, he shows what actually excites the boy; the object of his affection. The key to his crush is in the actions of the boy and how he conducts without logic and personal will. Through eloquent descriptions of settings, moods, emotions, wisdom, and a recurring darkness, Araby highlights a boy’s coming-of-age journey to realize his foolish childhood mistake.
The story begins with a vivid description of the setting. The boy feels very emotionless about where he lives and how his neighborhood appears. Joyce repeatedly uses negative words to point out how the buildings represent his hindrance toward his life. Joyce writes, “An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbors in a square ground. The other houses

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