Araby Literary Analysis

In the end, the two boys are faced with the grim reality that the girls have no desire for their company. This is their awakening of themselves. It shows how despair can be both disheartening and uplifting at the same time. The gifts each young man offered his love interest are not well received. No matter their efforts, both young men fail miserably in their attempts to win their respective ladies. Sammy knows what he has done will change his life forever and that nothing can change that now but, is also very exited at what the future holds. The boy from "Araby" is left alone, in the middle of the bazaar, realizing the foolishness of his thought. The final line of "Araby" summarizes the feeling that both boys share, "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger".

I will be writing my essay on innocence and experience to show how it relates to “Araby” by James Joyce. While reading the story, and what I’ve understood is that it’s a very depressing story about a young boy that is between 12 to 17 years of age who had his first experience in feeling loved and perhaps having a life alone. Later on in the story towards the end the experience will be very sad as we talk about it.

The narrator is deeply infatuated with Mangan’s sister and she is always on his mind. He states, “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom.” (Joyce 2). The quote talks about the narrator’s smitten feelings for a girl only referred to as Mangan’s sister. It is evident that she is always on his mind and she naturally flows through his mind unconsciously. He is also very grief-stricken at times, which surprises him. The fact that Mangan’s sister does not have a name clearly reveals that the narrator is in love with what she represents, physical beauty. This is something rather mutual for any adolescent boy experiencing sexual beauty for the first time. He is stuck in his own little world of infatuation where she is always present and he also feels sad as he cannot convey his feelings of love. Also, after the narrator decided that he will bring something for Mangan’s sister as a gift from the bazaar, Araby, he is overcome with joy. He states, “What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school.” (Joyce 2). The quote

The boy also hid his inner self from the truth, like the house, because of his own lust for Mangan’s sister. He, being a boy, did not understand what love was, yet pursued it trying to gain inner happiness. “Each morning” he would lie “on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped” (para. 4). He lusts after her thinking that is was pure love.

The boy's final disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to the world around him. The tawdry superficiality of the bazaar, which in his mind had been an "Oriental enchantment," strips away his blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that life and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is profane. The bazaar is dark and empty; it thrives on the same profit motive as the market place ("two men were counting money on a salver"); love is represented as an empty, passing flirtation.

With religion being a very prominent factor in the lives of the characters in this story, the narrator neglects to realize that this factor will make it nearly impossible for them to be together. With the inability to realize this, mixed with his teenage hormones, this causes him to be engulfed by his objectification of Manegen’s sister. “My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running along the wires” (Joyce, 217). He allows her to control him so heavily; simply by the way she moves or speaks, he doesn’t allow himself to live his own life as the person he truly is. By not allowing himself to see anything else past this girl he is idealizing, he shuts himself off from the rest of the things in his life, the more important things, such as work and school.

"Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door...At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read." This shows the extent to which the narrator desires to be with Mangan's sister.

In the short stories, “Paul’s Case” by Willa Carter and “Araby” by James Joyce, both the protagonists are infatuated with the idea of escaping the conventional routines in their daily lives. Their main goal is to obtain a more romantic, extravagant, glamourized life. For Paul, his dream of a glamorized life lies in distant New York. For the unnamed protagonist in “Araby”, he hopes to find his in Araby with the neighbor girl who he barely knows. They believe that by achieving this escape, they’ll find the pleasure and satisfaction they’ve been hoping for. Both the protagonists dream to find a romance in a world hostile to romance by escaping the reality that they live in.

In her story, "Araby," James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies inherent in 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 the story is told in retrospect by a man who looks back to a particular moment of intense meaning and insight. 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

Expectations and reality consistently oppose one another for numerous situations in one’s lifetime. Humans tend to desire something and act to obtain it. Although, what is expected may not always occur thus the result is mostly disappointment but, a lesson is usually learnt. This is explicitly presented in the short story “Araby”, by James Joyce, which is a short story released in 1914 as a collection comprised of 15 stories named Dubliners. Through the first-person point of view of a boy, the story emphasizes a prime example of how reality does not agree with expectations. This unnamed boy transitions from a playful individual to a person in love with the sister of his closest friend.

In James Joyce’s short story "Araby," the main character is a young boy who confuses obsession with love. This boy thinks he is in love with a young girl, but all of his thoughts, ideas, and actions show that he is merely obsessed. Throughout this short story, there are many examples that show the boy’s obsession for the girl. There is also evidence that shows the boy does not really understand love or all of the feelings that go along with it.

“Araby,” is a story of emotional passion carefully articulated by the author, James Joyce, to mark the end of childhood and the start of adolescence. It is told from the perspective of a young boy who is filled with lust for his friend, Mangan’s, sister. He lives in a cheerless town on a street hosting simply complacent families who own brown faced houses that stare vacantly into one another. The boy temporarily detaches himself from this gloomy atmosphere and dwells on the keeper of his affection. Only when he journeys to a festival titled Araby, does he realize that his attempt at winning the heart of Mangan’s sister has been done in an act of vanity. Joyce takes advantage of literary elements such as diction and imagery to convey an at times dreary and foolishly optimistic tone.

James Joyce’s short story Araby delves into the life of a young adolescent who lives on North Richmond Street in Dublin, Ireland. Narrated in the boys’ perspective, he recounts memories of playing with friends and of the priest who died in the house before his family moved in. With unrestrained enthusiasm, the boy expresses a confused infatuation with the sister of his friend Mangan. She constantly roams his thoughts and fantasies although he only ever catches glimpses of her. One evening she speaks to him, confiding that she is unable to visit Araby, a bazaar. Stunned by the sudden conversation, the boy promises he will go and bring her back a small memento. In anticipation, the boy launches into a period of restless waiting and distraction

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you. Love is in the air like the aroma of a fresh lit candle lingering in a room. People are consistently looking and finding love each and every day, in all sorts of ways and places. In Araby written by James Joyce the story of a boy who falls in love with one of his playmate’s sister. Love is seen all throughout the book, making this book have relatable connections to the reader; due to its relevance in the world today. Araby is a prime example of a child hitting puberty, and starting to fall in love. In this book, Joyce shows us how love can make one change their ways and give someone purpose.

Despite these discouraging surroundings, the boy is determined to find some evidence of the loveliness his idealistic dreams tell him should exist within the Church. His first love becomes the focal point of this determination. In the person of Mangan's sister, obviously somewhat older than the boy and his companions, his longings find an object of worship. The boy's feelings for the girl are a confused mixture of sexual desire and of sacred adoration, as