Araby's Use Of Setting Analysis Essay

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".

Every story has a setting. Whether it is in this world or one that is completely imaginary, the setting of any story is necessary in order to understand the characters. The characters in the following three short stories are shaped by their setting and would not be the same if the setting was different. Over the course of each story it is easy to see how vital the setting is in order for the reader to fully understand the characters and their lives. Therefore, while the reader reads these stories they must analyze how the setting affects the characters, the obstacles that the setting creates, and what it tells us about the characters.

"Every story would be another story, and unrecognizable if it took up its characters and plot and happened somewhere else... Place is the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of, what happened? Who 's here? Who 's coming?” Eudora Welty stated this, emphasizing the importance setting has on a story. Authors of all kinds, young and old, famous and not famous, boy or girl—they all have at least one thing in common: setting. In every story a setting is described, sometimes in exceeding detail. Some authors make an attempt to give their audience full understanding of the setting their story is taking place. Many do this by describing the smells, colors, textures, sounds, and sometimes even tastes, to the reader. In many early-American writings, authors go ‘above and beyond’ to help their reader understand the setting, so as to feel what the writer is feeling. Setting often stirs a sense of empathy in the reader’s mind if the descriptions are well-written and captivating. Authors such as Joyce Carol Oates and especially Edgar Allan Poe are well-known for their use of description in the setting. Two very successful stories, written by these authors, are excellent examples of setting. Furthermore, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Poe, and “Where is Here?” by Oates both display how the author uses setting to help the reader visualize the situation, create

The idea of light and dark plays a significant role in the black society of the 1950s that the narrator and Sonny grew up in. The narrator once speaks of a time when many family members and friends would get together to chat and eat Sunday dinner at his parent's home after church service. He alludes to the darkness once again by saying that moments would occur when the stark silence of the adults brought on by a serious conversation or a dismal revelation, perhaps about a death in the community or some other dark happening that penetrated the light that they had just before talked and laughed so freely in, threatened to prematurely alert the children of what the world around them was really like (98). At this point, the children are completely oblivious to the racism and other immoralities that thrive in the world they will soon have to venture into, but they are able to sense that something very distasteful is imminent, hence the child wishing that "the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop - will never die" (98). This idea of being an innocent child during a very tempestuous time was more than many young men could cling on to. The narrator was able to escape from the lifestyle

Good authors can create wonderful stories, but it all starts with the setting. Without the setting, the story will have no plot and the characters will have no reason to be there because the setting is a crucial element. Barry Callaghan, the author of “Our Thirteenth Summer” can effectively use setting as an important part of a story. The setting of “Our Thirteenth Summer” is in Toronto’s Annex District during the 1840’s, when the Holocaust was occurring. The setting influences the behaviour of the characters and reflects the society in which the characters live.

"Although there was evening brightness showing through the windows of the bunkhouse, inside it was dust". This shows that the light tries to get in but never manages to penetrate the darkness. This is important to the themes of the story because workers' hope for a future farm is just like the light while the cruel reality is like the darkness. Their efforts to realize this plan is just like the light trying to penetrate the darkness, but their dream

Setting is the specific or general environment where a story or event takes place. This novel is set in the 1960s in a town divided by the East and West sides. The division in the city separates characters based on social class, creating unequal treatment between gangs as characters of the West Side believe in superiority over the East. The small rivalry between classes leads to much larger problems, forming events, such as the Socs jumping Ponyboy and Johnny, that lead to the main plot of the book.

From the opening sentence Joyce gives his readers and idea of what to expect from his stories. Examining the term gives a deeper meaning that enhances the story. At the boy’s home, “The wild garden behind the house contained a central apple tree and a…rusty bicycle pump” (21). The apple-tree symbolizes Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, self-deception followed by self-knowledge. The bicycle pump symbolizes the kid’s pumped up, full of hot air, fascination with the girl and then being deflated. The apple tree and bicycle pump are clues to the outcome of the story. The boy also discovers three important and symbolic books in his house. The Abbot is about the worship of a special lady, The Devout Communicant is about worship and The Memoirs of Vidocq is a detective story that usually ends with the truth being revealed. All three stories are hinting at what will happen to the boy at the end of the story. The boy goes to Araby, a market of goods from all over the world, to buy the girl a gift in order to prove his love to her, but when he finally gets there the market’s closing in ten minutes. The boy “heard a voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out” (27). Joyce frequently uses light to symbolize an epiphany or realization. In this case, the boy realizes the girl does not really have feelings for him as he had convinced himself to believe. The light provides the reader with the moment the boy

The interplay of dark and light motifs underlies the narrator’s most recent hardship. On his way home on the subway, the narrator comes across his brother’s name in a newspaper and “stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (Baldwin). Riding in the light of the subway car, the author makes the non-suspecting narrator subject to suffering, unguarded by the protective cloak of the outside darkness. Made vulnerable by the exposed light and people surrounding him, the narrator is hit harder by the unexpected news than if he had read it in the darkness of his private room. Under the “swinging lights,” the narrator is not prepared to cope with the troubling news. This emphasizes the importance of light as a symbol for one’s need of camouflage to properly cope with tragedy.

Since symbolism first began to be used in the English language, Light has always represented a theme of hope and optimism. The phrase “Light at the end of the tunnel” best encompasses this, implying an opportunity or relief after difficulty or chaos. In the same way, Darkness has represented confusion or despair. James Joyce expands on the traditional connotations of Light and Darkness in his short story “Araby”. The narrative follows a young boy on his futile quest to find love with a girl much older than himself whom he hardly knows. Joyce uses Light to represent not only hope, but unrealistic idealism and illusion. In the same way, Darkness, in addition to despair, represents the reality and truth in the narrator's predicament. Joyce

The boy's manner of thought is also made clear in the opening scenes. Religion controls the lives of the inhabitants of North Richmond Street, but it is a dying religion and receives only lip service. The boy, however, entering the new experience of first love, finds his vocabulary within the experiences of his religious training and the romantic novels he has read. The result is an idealistic and confused interpretation of love based on quasireligious terms and the imagery of romance. This convergence of two great myths, the Christian with its symbols of hope and sacrifice and the Oriental or romantic with its fragile symbols of heroism and escape, merge to form in his mind an illusory world of mystical and ideal beauty. This convergence, which creates an epiphany for the

Things can happen in some places and the tale of them will be interesting. The same story laid in another city would be ridiculous. Setting situates the story`s events, characters and mood through place, time and weather. Without the different dimensions of setting, a story would not have the diversity to introduce new or changed characters, define their true identities, compare societies and reveal hidden emotions. Through Morrison`s Sula, setting is used as the key factor behind every event that occurred.

The story begins as many of Joyce’s others, with a sad and dreary town that the narrator describes to the readers. The narrator is revealed to be a little boy,

Joyce uses diction to support the overall tone of “Araby,” through his use of words and phrases such as “had grown somber. . .” (Joyce 400) and “musty. . .” (Joyce 400). The verbiage he uses constructs a dull and increasingly gloomy image as if darkness is enclosing the town being depicted. Word choices like “waste. . .” (Joyce 400) and “useless. . .” (Joyce 400) convey the stagnant environment that encases the lifeless neighborhood the boy lives in. Joyce communicates the dreariness that cloaks Dublin by using dreadful adjectives to describe the setting. The young boy’s short lived “confused adoration” (Joyce 401) for his friend’s sister, is depicted using feminine words in association with her, such as “petticoat. . .” (Joyce 401) and “soft. . .” (Joyce 400). When the speaker is professing Mangan’s sister’s control over him, he proclaims, “[m]y body [is] like a harp and her words and gestures [are] like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce 401). The boy reveals his ignorance by incorrectly calling harp strings, “wires. . .” (Joyce 401). This simple error portrays his confusion about his own feelings and the reasoning behind them. The author uses diction to support the tone of the short story, “Araby,” through his choice of words that reveal both the glum atmosphere of the setting and the naive affection being displayed by the speaker.

Since the boy is the narrator, the inclusion of these symbolic images in the description of the setting shows that the boy is sensitive to the lack of spiritual beauty in his surroundings. Outside the main setting are images symbolic of those who don’t belong to the Church. The boy and his companions go there at times, behind their houses, along the "dark muddy lanes," to where the "rough tribes" (the infidel) dwell. Here odors arise from "the ash pits"--those images symbolic to James Joyce of the moral decay of his nation.