James Joyce's "Araby" James Joyce's

¶ … James Joyce's "Araby" James Joyce's short story, "Araby," is the tale of a young boy coming of age through the realization that things are rarely as they appear. The young narrator must come to terms with the fact that things are never as they appear and practically never the way we want them to be.

This is a tough lesson for anyone to learn at any age but most of the time, we come to learn these life lessons through a crush on someone in which we hold a high regard. In this story, the narrator's attention is drawn to Mangan's sister, who becomes angelic to him. This image is one that can only come crashing down, as it is completely irrational and something the girl did not ask for in the first place.

The first lesson about life might be the toughest for this young man as he realizes the girl is nothing like he imagined and this is the lesson life hold for all of us. We learn from things that are important to us. In this story, Mangan's sister is not only the object of attention for the narrator but also the catalyst of his epiphany. She becomes the reason that he begins to see the world as it really as opposed to the way he wishes it could be.

The story ends with him becoming painfully aware that she is not the girl he assumed she was. In fact, she was nothing more than a dream he conjured up. Early in the story, she is something like a fantasy to him. She is that dreamy, lofty image that we all have of a person when we are infatuated with him or her. We read that he thinks of her "in places most hostile to romance" (Joyce 383) and manages to think of her most of the time.

He associates pleasure and joy to these thoughts not because of who the girl actually is but because of who he wants her to be. The story progresses with the narrator becoming more acquainted with the real girl. The bazaar is nothing like what he thought it would b so it is only fitting that she, too, be seen by the true light of day.

How he sees her also changes how he sees himself, for he thinks he is a "creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger" (386). He realizes the power of desire as well as its danger. Almost every young person will experience a situation similar to this. We all hold people up in high esteem when we are infatuated with them and, gradually, we begin to see them as the human being they are, with faults and frailties.

Joyce uses imagery and the setting to emphasize certain aspects of the story. In the beginning of the story, he is "in love" and not able to see the girl for whom she really is. Early in the story, we see that he is at a place where he needs something to take him away from his "sombre" (382) house during the long winter days. The narrator and his friends play in the streets their "shouts echoed in the silent street" (382).

The setting in this story is bleak when the narrator says, "The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits" (382). These images are powerful and they emphasize the bright light that is equated to Mangan's sister. She is literally a respite among the desolate streets in which the narrator lives.

As he enters the room in which the priest died, all he can do is whisper a prayer to her, muttering, "O love! O. love!" (383). Here we see how the narrator has given an inordinate amount of power to Mangan's sister. He does this because he is young and impressionable and because his environment literally begs for something bright and lovely to provide some pleasure. This behavior is not limited to adolescents as we might guess; adults do this every day with love interests, children, and politicians.

However, adults are generally aware when they behaving irrationally whereas children must learn this through experience and this is where the narrator is in his life. The experience becomes richer because it is seen through the eyes of a young boy. Benstock notes because "Araby" is narrated in first-person "Araby," we are experiencing what life might have been like for Joyce as a young boy.

The boy, while we do not know his age, is still young enough to be influenced by certain "larger than life" images of the girl and the priest. Barnhisel maintains that the narrator in this story is a "sensitive boy, searching for principles with which to make sense of the chaos and banality of the world" (Barnhisel). This is a sensitive age because the mind is open to experience and knowledge but without reason. The events he experiences are also "well within the framework of ordinary childhood occurrences" (Benstock).

One of these occurrences is the disappointment of his puppy love with Mangan's sister. The narrative, since told through his perspective is "recorded by the limited perception of an intelligent but nonetheless inexperienced and susceptible consciousness" (Benstock). It is worth noting, however, that as with many of Joyce's stories, we find our narrator reaching an epiphany at the end of the tale that pushes him closer to being an adult than he would like to admit.

Before arriving at the bazaar, the narrator imagines himself to be a chivalrous knight, the "sordidly ordinary bazaar defeats him" (Benstock). The conclusion of the story is more shocking to the narrator because of his ideals than it actually is in the real world. He realizes she is not what he dreamed her to be and certainly nothing that he would want. When he sees her for what she actually is, he sees that she could only disappoint and hurt him. Symbolism is important in the story.

Joyce uses Catholicism to reinforce certain beliefs and attitudes. The narrator attends a Catholic school and the library to which he is attracted once belonged to the priest. Barnhisel asserts the narrator "takes the Catholic idea of devotion to the Virgin Mary and finds a real-world substitute for the Mother of God" (Barnhisel), which is the Mangan's sister. He also maintains that at the end of the story, the "various symbols Joyce employs converge" (Barnhisel).

The light, which is associated with the girl, suddenly meets the dark hall as the bazaar closes. Barnhisel writes, the narrator "begins to see Mangan's sister not as the image of the Virgin, but as a mundane English shop-girl engaging in idle conversation" (Barnhisel). She and everything attached to her was nothing but an illusion. Barnhisel writes, "His quest, he now realizes, was misconceived in the first place, and he now recognizes the mistake of joining his religious fervor with his romantic passion.