Araby, By James Joyce

The narrator “Araby”, an unnamed young Irish boy, living with his aunt and uncle on North Richmond Street, residing in a house once occupied by a now-dead priest. The narrator, an orphan, spends his days attending school, spending time with his friend Mangan, and pining after Mangan’s sister. The narrator lives a relatively normal live, although he gradually becomes more consumed with the idea of Mangan’s sister, “I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play” (Joyce, 124. The narrator idealizes Mangan’s sister, barely speaking to her, yet he

So this infatuation continues to get stronger as he explains his interactions with her; “When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her” (Joyce, 1). This is clearly an activity that he has done more than once and by himself, he spends all his time trying to be near Mangan 's older sister, which isolates him more and makes him seem to want her more and more. Where the boy from Araby’s loneliness drives him to find love, Else in The Yellow Wallpaper, attempts to escape her room and mind increasingly more vigorously as she becomes more isolated. As Else herself is the narrator of the story, the chronology of her mental illness taking hold of her through the story is evident. By the very end, her mind has taken her to a completely different world in the last scene; “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper” (Gilman, 13). In her desperation and loneliness, Else rips off the ugly wallpaper as she now imagines that that is what is trapping her and feels defiant in what she feels is a victory, whether in reality it is or not. For each character in Araby and The Yellow Wallpaper, their id is strong as their actions follow it diligently because of the environment of desolation.

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

Beginning in the short story “Araby,” Joyce describes the events leading up to a young boy’s trip to the market. Youthful and excited about the prospect of love for Mangan’s sister, this nameless narrator expects to buy something for her at the market after she hints that while she cannot go, “It's well for [him].” After this, the boy is unable to think of much else as he goes about his lessons, waiting to go to this exotic bazaar. He waits for his uncle to come home so he can get money, but arrives at the bazaar too late as it is just closing up. At this moment, the magic of Araby is gone, replaced with an immature view of

James Joyce published “Araby” in 1914 in his short-story collection of Dubliners. It is about an introverted young boy who is fumbling towards adulthood with an infatuation towards a girl. However, there are many obstacles that stand before him and the girl of his dream including his community and family. From the settings’ description, the boy does not like his neighborhood. It is a

“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, 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.

Joyce uses the darkness as a symbol of the dwindling faith the boy has as everything slowly starts to fall apart after he agrees to fetch Mangan's sister an artifact from the bazaar: "I looked over at the dark house where she lived … seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discretely by the lamplight…" (pg. 56 Joyce) Joyce portrays the darkness that the boy feels through the dramatic imagery of the dark house in which the girl lives and how he does not see her, but instead, everything he wants is now in his imagination and is not real. Furthering this idea of how the boy slowly loses hope in his relationship with Mangan's sister, Golbarg Khorsand in his academic article "Paths to Paralysis: Symbolism and Narratology in James Joyce's ‘Araby' and ‘Eveline'" states: "his willingness to overcome material obstacles for the joy of attaining his destination, has religious fervor. But … the trivial, and the gross awaits him … The glowing colors with which idealists surround spiritual objects fail to appear." (pg 97. Khorsand) It is with this quotation that Khorsand shows that the boy's extreme vigor and faith to retrieve the artifact from the bazaar has been lost through Joyce's lack of spiritual and celestial lighting in the surroundings of the boy. Joyce portrays this even more so through the lighting of the boy's surroundings when he gets to the bazaar. Joyce envelopes the hall in partial darkness to show the lack of faith the boy has going into the bazaar: "Nearly all of the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognize a silence like that which pervades a church after a service." (pg. 57 Joyce) Joyce uses this darkness to show how much the boy is "remembering with difficulty why I had come" (pg. 57 Joyce) in the

The unnamed narrator, determined to find the perfect gift for Mangan’s sister did not succeed in winning her love. Due to the “daily grind” of his uncle, the narrator arrived at the bazaar, Araby too late and could not find any stall open that had the gift he wanted for Mangan’s sister. In this futile attempt to gain the affection or appreciation from this young girl, the narrator suddenly realized the harsh contrast between his romantic ideals and the reality of the Araby. As he would watch the young girl from a distance, now at the Araby, he observed a young lady talk to two young gentlemen, and she spoke to the him “out of a sense of duty” (Joyce). At this point, the narrator Awakened from his delusion; the narrator realized that winning

“Araby”, a short story written by James Joyce, is about a young boy who develops a crush on a girl, that later ends with disappointment. One evening the girl, who is Mangan’s sister, asks him if he plans to go to the fair, called Araby. The girl is unable to go because of activities at her school. This brief conversation and the idea of the trip to the fair causes the boy to lose concentration of his train of thought. He promises that if he goes, he will bring her something back. The young boy gets permission to attend the fair on Saturday night. When Saturday night arrives, his uncle gets home late. After waiting for a long time, the boy receives money for the bazaar, but by

The book “Araby” by James Joyce tells the story of a boy who lives with his family in North Richmond Street. The boy narrates about how he plays with his friends in the street and about the previous owner of the house where he lives. He also reveals that he has a crush on one of his friend’s sister and how he would often daydream about her in the most unlikely of places (Joyce, 1014). One day Mangan’s sister confesses to him that she would love to go to the Araby bazaar but that she cannot go “because there would be a retreat that week in her convent.” (Joyce, 1914, par. 9) The boy promises that when he goes to the bazaar he will bring her a present. However, after taking a train, he arrives late at the bazaar and finds nothing interesting

In this story “ Araby” the narrator an unnamed boy describes the North Dublin street on which his house located. He is fascinated with a girl known as “ Mangan’s sister.” The narrator pledges to buy her a present for the bazaar, but leaves without one, frustrated with the inactive babble of a saleswoman he meets. Furthermore, the narrator lives with his aunt and uncle. The former lessee of his house died and left behind a library that machination the narrator. Mangan’s sister the narrator if he intends on attending a bazaar called Araby, and he promises to get her something from the exhibition as a gift. However, the adversary in this story, which can easily be determined, is the culture and life in Dunlin. This has a great impact on the unnamed

James Joyce’s “Araby” is the story of a young boy who battles his emotions of dealing with his first love. Childhood and immature love is what was portrayed because all this young boy knew was that he loves this girl, but little did he know that there was going to be disappointment. However, he had this infatuation that he would never get the chance to talk to her nor express his feelings. Throughout this short story we see a major change in which the narrator’s journey changes from an innocent love to him coming to terms with a situation that does not turn out the way he hopes it would. The story exemplifies several literary elements; Two of which are symbolism and setting. It is through these

The story opens with a description of North Richmond Street, a “silent” and “blind” street whose inhabitants are smugly complacent. The featureless exterior of the houses reflect the same gratuitously self-satisfied attitudes of these occupants (Joyce). It is a street of fixed, decaying conformity and false devotion. A priest, the former tenant of the boy’s home, died in the back room of the house, leaving behind only old yellowed books and a bicycle pump rusting in the backyard. The deteriorating conditions of both the books and the pump serve as

His desire strengthens after this, and he hopes to find a gift at Araby that will impress Mangan's sister. Then, he begins to obsess over her and the trip to Araby. The narrator’s obsession causes him to become bored with his schoolwork. Anything that stood between him and his desire seemed to be “ugly monotonous child's play” to him (Joyce 263). Irritability became a common emotion for him. He left the house “in a bad humor” when his uncle stood in the hall, which prevented him from watching for Mangan's sister one morning. Then, later that day, a clock's ticking irritated him to the point where he had to leave the room (Joyce 263).