Araby James Joyce\'s Short Story,

Araby

James Joyce's short story, "Araby," concerns the desires and fantasies of an adolescent young boy. This unnamed boy is experiencing his awakening lusts for the first time in the story. The disappointment at the end serves as the maturing effect of reality upon fantasy. In essence the story is simple, with universal appeal - it is easy to relate with the plight of the boy, although the situation and circumstances are somewhat outdated. In his short story, James Joyce demonstrates in both universal and highly individual terms the fantasy and disappointment that can be part of the same love object.

The protagonist's love object is a girl known only as "Mangan's sister." She arouses his fantasy at first from a distance. She is seen only when calling her brother in to tea. The boy's feelings for her become apparent first when he begins his sensory description of her. At the beginning these descriptions are innocently limited to her "soft rope of hair." Later, as the boy's contact with her increases, so does his obsession and fantasy regarding her. This becomes evident in the increased intensity of his descriptions:

The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease."

It is thus clear from this first and only meeting between the two that the boy is completely smitten with Mangan's sister. The result is that she dominates his thoughts and actions. In his enthusiasm to go to Araby for the bazaar to buy her a gift, the boy begins to neglect the other aspects of his life. While he admits to the foolishness of this, he is unable to stop himself from letting the fantasy of the girl override everything else in importance:

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."

These "follies" are also seen by the boy's school master as "idleness," which juxtaposes the perceived importance of the feeling for the boy with the more rational views of outsiders.

This rational view is also represented by the boy's uncle, who is reminded more than once that the boy plans to go to the bazaar. The climax of the story occurs with the boy's wild excitement on the day of the bazaar: "On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly..."

The Uncle was obviously busy with his own work, perceived by himself as much more important than the boy's need to go to the bazaar, which deserves no more than a curt reply. The first brush of reality then occurs when the uncle forgets the bazaar and arrives home only at nine, and finally when the boy arrives at the bazaar. No words can express more clearly the boy's disappointment than the last lines of the story: "Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."