Disappointment and Heartache in James

Disappointment and Heartache in James Joyce's "Araby," "Eveline," and "The Boarding House."

While we like to believe that hope will prevail, we must sometimes take a look at reality and realize that with relationships, disappointment and heartache are never far away. James Joyce establishes this notion in his short stories "Araby," "Eveline," and "The Boarding House." In Joyce's world, relationships lead to disappointment because they do not always have the "happily ever after" ending. To drive this idea home, each of these stories leave characters looking back at hope, standing too far away to touch it. People are lead astray by their unfounded hope and some are manipulated into situations that seem hopeless. Regardless of how these characters come into their circumstances, they are faced with disappointment and heartbreak, revealing Joyce's negative point-of-view in relation to love.

Unrealistic hope almost always leads to failure. In "Araby," our narrator is completely enthralled with Mangan. In his dark and dreary world, she is a bright light that brings him hope. We read when our narrator goes into even the darkest of places - the room in which the priest died, he feels excited when he thinks of her and can whisper "O love! O. love!" (Joyce Araby), with no regard to anything but thoughts of the girl. Joyce is placing our narrator in a dark place in which there needs to be some hope and light. In doing so, he is placing himself up for disappointment because the image of the girl will be greater than the girl could ever be. At the end of the story, Mangan is reduced to something real rather than remaining something fantastical. We move with the narrator to his process of realization. In the beginning of the story, she was like a dream. Our narrator finds that he thinks of her when he is in "places most hostile to romance" (Joyce) and she is the source of all that is good and happy to him. As with most ideals of the young, he must slowly come around to the truth of the matter. The catalyst is the bazaar because, just like Mangan, it does live up to his expectations. As he is walking the bazaar, he thinks of himself as a "creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger" (Joyce). Our narrator is forced to accept that nothing in life is rarely what is seems.

In "Eveline," we find that disappointment is draped with missed opportunity. Eveline is not so much seeing the world through rose-colored glasses as much as she is afraid to look ahead. She is paralyzed by fear and this keeps her from moving forward. She wants a different life where "people would treat her with respect (Joyce Eveline)" and Frank offers this to her. We know he could "save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too" (Joyce). Here we see Eveline coming closer to love and happiness than she has ever been. Yet, she is torn and afraid. A new life looks and sounds good but she also likes the "familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided (Joyce)." She lets the unknown frighten her to the point that she convinces herself that she cannot have that good like with Frank. As she looks out the window at the end of the story, she realizes that her hope has just left her and the odds of her finding another opportunity to escape is nil. Her disappointment is passed on to Frank and they both suffer because of her inaction and resulting fear.

In "The Boarding house," we discover disappointment connected to two characters, Polly and Mr. Doran. In this story, disappointment is wrapped up with victimization and manipulation. Mrs. Mooney is the one holding the cards in this game and she is determined to see that her daughter does not suffer for the sake of a man. Mr. Doran becomes her victim Mrs. Mooney deals with her own misery. While Polly is accustomed to having her way with the men of the boarding house, her mother is intent on her having some semblance of a good life. Mr. Doran is a victim of circumstance. He happens to be at the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time and ends up paying for it - perhaps for the rest of his life. We read, "There must be reparation made in such case. It is all very well for the man... But the girl has to bear the brunt" (Joyce Boarding House). Here we see that practically everything is sacrificed for honor - including happiness. We know that he felt guilt over what happened between Polly and himself but we do not know if he would have gone as far as he did without a little persuasion. Clearly, Polly and her mother have seized the opportunity but they have missed a crucial point, which is the happily ever after that we all seek when we think of living our lives with someone else. Here, we see disappointment crouched in manipulation and we can assume that Mr. Doran will be unhappy and we can be almost as certain that Polly will be, too. Polly has hopes of a bright future and that is indeed how Joyce chooses to end the story, but those hopes are shrouded in Mr. Doran's bad luck.