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“ARABY”

By James JoyceJoyce is one of the most famous writers of the Modernist period of literature, which runsroughly from 1900 to the end of World War II. Modernist works often include characters whoare spiritually lost and themes that reflect a cynicism toward institutions the writer had beentaught to respect, such as government and religion. Much of the literature of this period isexperimental.

Araby

was one of the short complex stories from James Joyce’s short story collection called

Dubliners

first published in 1907, that are a reflection of his own life as a boy growing up inDublin. As James Joyce was born in Dublin, he chose to write stories about the everyday lives of men, women and children of this place during the late Victorian period. The schools, streets, businesses, hotels, and public figures generally appear under their real names and it accounts tothe realistic style of the story.Although each story from

Dubliners

is a unique and separate depiction, they allhave similarities with each other. Each of the stories in

Dubliners

consists of a portrait in whichDublin contributes to the dehumanizing experience of modem life. The story focuses on escapeand fantasy; about darkness, despair and enlightenment and it is a retrospective of Joyce’s look back at life and the constant struggle between ideals and reality. The boy in the story

Araby

isintensely subject to the city’s dark, hopeless conformity and his tragic yearning toward the exoticin the face of drab, ugly reality forms the center of the story.On its simplest level,

Araby

is a story about a boy’s first love. On a deeper level, however, it is astory about the world in which he lives a world inimical to ideals and dreams. This deeper levelis introduced and developed in several scenes: the opening description of the boy's street, hishouse, his relationship to his aunt and uncle, the information about the priest and his belongings,the boy's two trips-his walks through Dublin shopping and his subsequent ride to Araby.On the surface, the story

Araby

, found in James Joyce’s collection of short stories,

Dubliners

, isthe story of a young man with a lustful crush on his friends sister. Careful examination of thereligious symbolism found in Joyce uncovers a story with deeper meaning; the story of a youngman torn between his religious beliefs and his feelings.

Araby

is one of fifteen short stories that together make up James Joyce’s collection,

Dubliners

.Although Joyce wrote the stories between 1904 and 1906, they were not published until 1914.

Dubliners

paints a portrait of life in Dublin, Ireland, at the turn of the twentieth century. Its

stories are arranged in an order reflecting the development of a child into a grown man. The firstthree stones are told from the point of view of a young boy, the next three from the point of viewof an adolescent, and so on.

Araby

is the last story of the first set and is told from the perspectiveof a boy just on the verge of adolescence. The story takes its title from a real festival which cameto Dublin in 1894 when Joyce was twelve years old.In the following excerpted essay, he discusses some of the autobiographical elements of

Araby

,which include Joyce's childhood in Dublin, Ireland, and how the exoticism of the real-life Arabyfestival, with its Far Eastern overtones, impacted the young Joyce.In the opening paragraphs of James Joyce's short story, "Araby," the setting takes center stage tothe narrator. Joyce tends carefully to the exquisite detail of personifying his setting, so that thenarrator's emotions may be enhanced. To create a genuine sense of mood, and reality, Joyce usesmany techniques such as first person narration, style of prose, imagery, and most of all setting.The setting of a short story is vital to the development of character.The story begins with the presentation of North Richmond Street, described metaphorically, andwith the first view of the character world. The street is “blind”; it is a dead end, yet itsinhabitants are smugly complacent; the houses reflect the attitudes of their inhabitants. Thehouses are “imperturbable” in “the quiet”, “the cold”, “the dark muddy lanes” and “dark drippinggardens”. The first use of situational irony is introduced here, because anyone who is aware, whois not spiritually blinded or asleep, would feel oppressed and endangered by North RichmondStreet. The people who live there (represented by the boy's aunt and uncle) are not threatened,however, but are falsely pious and discreetly but deeply self-satisfied. Their prejudice isdramatized by the aunt’s hopes that Araby, the bazaar the boy wants to visit, is not14someFreemason affair and by old Mrs. Mercer’s gossiping over tea while collecting stamps for "some pious purpose.The background or world of blindness extends from a general view of the street and itsinhabitants to the boy’s personal relation-ships. It is not a generation gap but a gap in the spirit,in empathy and conscious caring, that results in the uncle’s failure to arrive home in time for the boy to go to the bazaar while it is still open. The uncle has no doubt been to the local pub,negligent and indifferent to the boy’s anguish and impatience. The boy waits well into theevening in the “imperturbable” house with its musty smell and old, useless objects that fill therooms. The house, like the aunt and uncle, and like the entire neighborhood, reflects people whoare well intentioned but narrow in their views and blind to higher values (even the street lampslift a “feeble” light to the sky). The total effect of such setting is an atmosphere permeated with

stagnation and isolation.The second use of symbolic description-that of the dead priest and his belongings-suggestsremnants of a more vital past. The bicycle pump rusting in the rain in the back yard and the oldyellowed books in the back room indicate that the priest once actively engaged in real service toGod and man, and further, from the titles of the books, that he was a person given to both pietyand flights of imagination. But the priest is dead; his pump rusts; his books yellow. The effect isto deepen, through a sense of a dead past, the spiritual and intellectual stagnation of the present.Into this atmosphere of spiritual paralysis the boy bears, with blind hopes and romantic dreams,his encounter with first love. In the face of ugly, drab reality-"amid the curses of laborers,""jostled by drunken men and bargaining women"-he carries his aunt's parcels as she shops in themarket place, imagining that he bears, not parcels, but a "chalice through a throng of foes." The"noises converged in a single sensation of life" and in a blending of Romantic and Christiansymbols he transforms in his mind a perfectly ordinary girl into an enchanted princess:untouchable, promising, saintly. Setting in this scene depicts the harsh, dirty reality of life whichthe boy blindly ignores. The contrast between the real and the boy's dreams is ironically drawnand clearly foreshadows the boy's inability to keep the dream, to remain blind.A young boy dream of “Mangan’s sister”, who lives nearby;

every day begins for this narrator with such glimpses of Mangan’s sister. Her image pursues him, even at night when he is tryingto say his prayers. One day, he actually encounters Mangan’s sister, and she asks whether he plans to go to the bazaar (called Araby) on Saturday night. She herself “would love to go”, butcannot, because she must attend a retreat at the convent. This is the boy’s big chance! He promises to bring her a gift from the bazaar. On Saturday evening he waits for his uncle to comehome and give him some money, but the uncle doesn't arrive until nine o’clock.The boy rushes onto a deserted train, trying desperately to reach Araby before it closes, but whenhe arrives “the greater part of the hall was in darkness”. A few stalls are still open. A few peopleare still hanging around. The boy looks at some porcelain figurines, but suddenly realizes that hisquest is doomed to failure. The boy’s final disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening tothe world around him. The tawdry superficiality of the bazaar, which in his mind had been an“Oriental enchantment”, strips away his blindness and leaves him alone with the realization thatlife and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is profane. The bazaar isdark and empty; it thrives on the same profit motive as the market place (“two men werecounting money on a salver”); love is represented as an empty, passing flirtation.

Category:	Books - Non-fiction > Travel
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Upload Date:	12/03/2009
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