Use of symbolism in ‘Araby’

Set in turn of the century Dublin, ‘Araby’ is described by Gerald Gould as a ‘wonderful magical study of boyish affection
and wounded pride’. ‘Araby’ is the psychological exploration of an adolescent boy’s feelings for an idolized female, his
desire to escape from the immediate reality, and his quest for the ideal that leads to subsequent sense of frustration.
Like other stories of Dubliners, it has both penetrating realism and symbolic function. Joyce uses a multitude of symbols
ranging from church, religion, light and darkness, death and decay, to create a multilayered short story with metaphoric
richness.

The story opens in the ‘North Richmond Street’ in Dublin where Joyce once lived. The use of the word ‘blind’ twice in the
opening paragraph may be an oblique reference to the prevailing darkness of Dublin life. The author, when he says the
Christian Brother’s School ‘set the boys free’, subtly points to the repressive nature of Catholic institutions in Ireland.
Through a series of symbols the atmosphere of death and decay is the established in the early paragraph of the story-
the brown houses of the neighbourhood, the death of the priest, musty air in the rooms, the littered old useless papers,
the rusty bicycle pump in the garden. The ‘wild garden’ with the ‘central apple and a few straggling bushes’ has an
underlying religious connotation and reminds one of a fallen Eden. With acute realism and the use of different
imageries, Joyce brings out the Modern aesthetics of the not beautiful. The coldness of the air that ‘stung’ the boys is an
example of tactile imagery; ‘the dark dripping gardens’ being auditory; while odours from the ashpits and the ‘dark
odorous stables’ are olfactory images.

Darkness operates as a motif throughout the stories of Dubliners. To make this darkness more palpable Joyce
‘continually juxtaposes vast darkness with tiny lights’ (M. W. Murphy). In ‘Araby’, Mangan’s sister plays the role of the
only source of light amidst the surrounding gloom in the life of the young boy. The narrator watched her when she
‘came out on the doorway to call her brother in to his tea…her figure defined by the light of the half-opened door’.
Mangan’s sister is presented as a type of Beatrice, mystically modulated by light and shade. The adolescent love of the
boy is tinged with sensuality as he describes ‘her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair
tossed from side to side’.

The story abounds in religious symbolism; the boy’s identification of his beloved with the vestiges of divinity is suggested
through allusions to her “brown” figure, the colour being associated with the Virgin Mary in Ireland. She remains
unnamed for she represents the eternal feminine for the boy and becomes an object of both adoration and devotion.

The elements of romance of romance and realism are artfully blended as the narrator describes the overpowering
sordidness of the Dublin marketplace: ‘the flaring streets jostled by drunken men and bargaining women’, ‘curses of
labourers’, shops selling ‘barrels of pigs’ cheeks’ and the ‘nasal chanting of street-singers’. The boy-narrator’s ability to
transcend the inhibiting influence of his milieu points to the intensity and purity of his emotions. ‘At the same time’, says
Michael Thorpe in his Introduction to Joyce in Modern Prose, ‘the boy’s frustrated quest for beauty in these drab
surroundings is representative of man’s universal- and universally frustrated-search for the ideal: this symbolic meaning
is pointed by reference to the ‘chalice’, which reminds one of the Grail Legend’. When the boy says, ‘I bore my chalice
safely through a throng of foes’, he aligns himself with the medieval spirit of quest, chivalry, romance and the
tremendous tryst with truth that is a spiritual engagement in every age. The religious terminology permeates the story
as the narrator deifies the girl and confesses, ‘Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises
which I myself did not understand’.

‘Araby’- the name given to a ‘Grand Oriental Fete’ held in Dublin in May, 1894, functions as the dominant point of
symbolic reference in the story. Having been one of the first words uttered by Mangan’s sister when “at last” she spoke
to him, Araby becomes for the boy-narrator not just a word but also a world for it was the fair she wanted very much to
visit as she expected it to be “a splendid bazaar”. Araby, the bazaar, operating as a mundane marketplace, becomes an
exoticized construct of the young boy’s imagination and a symbol of the mystique and allure of the Middle East. Like
Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the narrator of ‘Araby’ wants ‘to meet in the real world the
unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld’ ( A Portrait). He promises to bring his beloved a present with
the desire to win her affections.

Since the time of his only conversation with the girl and his arrival in Araby, the story dwells on the theme of quest for
the ideal and the inevitable frustration of the quest. The day when the author is about to visit Araby is prolonged
boundlessly and is suggestive of every man’s wait for the unknown. The uncle’s curt answer, the “pitilessly raw” morning
air, the misgivings of the narrator’s heart, the intrusion of the pawnbroker’s widow Mrs Mercer (with the mercenary
associations of her name), combine to indicate the quotidian trials that made up the boy’s life.

As the boy boards the ‘third-class carriage of a deserted’ Araby-bound special train that ‘after an intolerable delay’
slowly creeps ‘onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river’- details symbolic of abject reality and the
fragile illusion that the boy harbours- he realizes that he ‘remained alone in the bare carriage’, that it is a solitary
journey of his own personal, esoteric quest for an ideal that he has ‘improvised’ himself. The ‘improvised wooden
platform’ may be an objective correlative to the personal icon.

When he finally reaches Araby, the boy finds himself in front of a ‘large building which displayed the magical name’. The
boy’s inability to find a six-penny entrance, and the reference to the weary-looking man at the turnstile, are naturalistic
details which portend the dreary nature of the reality awaiting the narrator. The Cafe´ Chantant or the “singing cafe´ ”
before which ‘two men were counting money on a salver’ may, in all reasonableness, be associated with the closing
cadences of the bazaar Araby, those of the story, and most importantly the dying strains of the narrator’s idealized
perception of a world which did not exist except in his imagination. The ethereal symphony of love degenerates into the
sound of clanking coins as he listlessly intones, ‘I listened to the fall of the coins’. The flippant accent of the salesgirl as
she flirted with the two young men is an ironic contrast to the intensity of love experienced by the young narrator.

The darkness of the hall when ‘nearly all the stalls were closed’ is again symbolic of the confusion and ignorance of the
boy’s own mind. . The image of the ‘porcelein vases’, a subtle reminder of the fragility of dreams and illusions, is
repeated in that of ‘the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance of the stall’. When
the narrator has realized the futility of his search, he allows the two pennies to ‘fall against the sixpence in his pocket’.
The effects of darkness and silence, consciously highlighted in the course of the story, are consolidated at the end with
somber pronouncement that ‘the light was out’. The upper part of the hall is now completely dark but this darkness is
enlightening as it enables the boy to reach an epiphany: ‘Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven
and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger’.

Although the story ends with the sense of frustration and defeat essential to all the stories of Dubliners, it is not meek
resignation that the burning eyes of the narrator symbolize; the boy having an artistic temperament and being the alter
ego of Joyce himself, his quest for absolute beauty will not end in failure under the pressure of sordid reality. He will
learn, with maturity, to redirect his search for the ideal from the domain of reality to the realm of imagination.