“ARABY”

By James Joyce

Joyce is one of the most famous writers of the Modernist period of literature, which runs
roughly from 1900 to the end of World War II. Modernist works often include characters who
are spiritually lost and themes that reflect a cynicism toward institutions the writer had been
taught to respect, such as government and religion. Much of the literature of this period is
experimental.
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 in
Dublin. 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 to
the realistic style of the story.
Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all
have similarities with each other. Each of the stories in Dubliners consists of a portrait in which
Dublin contributes to the dehumanizing experience of modem life. The story focuses on escape
and 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 is
intensely subject to the city’s dark, hopeless conformity and his tragic yearning toward the exotic
in 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 a
story about the world in which he lives a world inimical to ideals and dreams. This deeper level
is introduced and developed in several scenes: the opening description of the boy's street, his
house, 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, is
the story of a young man with a lustful crush on his friends sister. Careful examination of the
religious symbolism found in Joyce uncovers a story with deeper meaning; the story of a young
man 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
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stories are arranged in an order reflecting the development of a child into a grown man. The first
three stones are told from the point of view of a young boy, the next three from the point of view
of an adolescent, and so on. Araby is the last story of the first set and is told from the perspective
of a boy just on the verge of adolescence. The story takes its title from a real festival which came
to 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 Araby
festival, 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 to
the narrator. Joyce tends carefully to the exquisite detail of personifying his setting, so that the
narrator's emotions may be enhanced. To create a genuine sense of mood, and reality, Joyce uses
many 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, and
with the first view of the character world. The street is “blind”; it is a dead end, yet its
inhabitants are smugly complacent; the houses reflect the attitudes of their inhabitants. The
houses are “imperturbable” in “the quiet”, “the cold”, “the dark muddy lanes” and “dark dripping
gardens”. The first use of situational irony is introduced here, because anyone who is aware, who
is not spiritually blinded or asleep, would feel oppressed and endangered by North Richmond
Street. 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 is
dramatized by the aunt’s hopes that Araby, the bazaar the boy wants to visit, is not14some
Freemason 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 its
inhabitants 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 the
evening in the “imperturbable” house with its musty smell and old, useless objects that fill the
rooms. The house, like the aunt and uncle, and like the entire neighborhood, reflects people who
are well intentioned but narrow in their views and blind to higher values (even the street lamps
lift a “feeble” light to the sky). The total effect of such setting is an atmosphere permeated with
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stagnation and isolation.
The second use of symbolic description-that of the dead priest and his belongings-suggests
remnants of a more vital past. The bicycle pump rusting in the rain in the back yard and the old
yellowed books in the back room indicate that the priest once actively engaged in real service to
God and man, and further, from the titles of the books, that he was a person given to both piety
and flights of imagination. But the priest is dead; his pump rusts; his books yellow. The effect is
to 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 the
market 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 Christian
symbols 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 which
the boy blindly ignores. The contrast between the real and the boy's dreams is ironically drawn
and 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 trying
to 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”, but
cannot, 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 come
home 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 when
he arrives “the greater part of the hall was in darkness”. A few stalls are still open. A few people
are still hanging around. The boy looks at some porcelain figurines, but suddenly realizes that his
quest is doomed to failure. The boy’s final disappointment occurs as a result of his awakening to
the 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 that
life and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is profane. The bazaar is
dark and empty; it thrives on the same profit motive as the market place (“two men were
counting money on a salver”); love is represented as an empty, passing flirtation.
Araby is a story of first love and it is a portrait of a world that defies the ideal and the dream.
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Thus setting in this story becomes the true subject, embodying an atmosphere of spiritual
paralysis against which a young boy’s idealistic dreams are no match. Realizing this, the boy
takes his first step into adulthood.
The visual and symbolic details embedded in the story are highly concentrated and the story
culminates in an epiphany. An epiphany is a moment when the essence of a character is revealed,
when all the forces that bear on his life converge and the reader can, in that instant, understand
him, a sudden moment of insight and understanding.
Araby is centered on an epiphany, and is concerned with a failure or deception, which results in
realization and disillusionment. The meaning is revealed in a young boy's psychic journey from
love to despair and disappointment, and the theme is found in the boy's discovery of the bazaar.
Araby is an attempt by the boy to escape the bleak darkness of North Richmond Street. Joyce
orchestrates an attempt to escape the “short days of winter”, “where night falls early” and
streetlights are but “feeble lanterns” failing miserably to light the somberness of the “dark muddy
lanes”. Metaphorically, Joyce calls the street blind, a dead end; A recurrent theme of darkness
weaves itself through the story; the boy hides in shadows from his uncle or catch a shy glimpse
of his friend Mangan’s sister, who obliviously is his first love. In Araby, the allure of new love
and distant places mingles with the familiarity of everyday drudgery, with frustrating
consequences. Mangan’s sister embodies this mingling, since she is part of the familiar
surroundings of the narrator’s street as well as the exotic promise of the bazaar. She is a “brown
figure” who both reflects the brown façades of the buildings that line the street and evokes the
skin color of romanticized images of Arabia that flood the narrator’s head. Like the bazaar that
offers experiences that differ from everyday Dublin, Mangan’s sister intoxicates the narrator
with new feelings of joy and elation. His love for her, however, must compete with the dullness
of schoolwork, his uncle’s lateness, and the Dublin trains. Though he promises Mangan’s sister
that he will go to Araby and purchase a gift for her, these mundane realities undermine his plans
and ultimately thwart his desires. The narrator arrives at the bazaar only to encounter flowered
teacups and English accents, not the freedom of the enchanting East. As the bazaar closes down,
he realizes that Mangan’s sister will fail his expectations as well, and that his desire for her is
actually only a vain wish for change.
The narrator’s change of heart concludes the story on a moment of epiphany, but not a positive
one. Instead of reaffirming his love or realizing that he does not need gifts to express his feelings
for Mangan’s sister, the narrator simply gives up. He seems to interpret his arrival at the bazaar
as it fades into darkness as a sign that his relationship with Mangan’s sister will also remain just
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a wishful idea and that his infatuation was as misguided as his fantasies about the bazaar. What
might have been a story of happy, youthful love becomes a tragic story of defeat.
Araby is about escaping into the world of fantasy. The narrator is infatuated with his friend’s
sister; he hides in the shadows, peering secluded from a distance trying to spy her “brown figure”
She is the light in his fantasy, someone who will lift him out of darkness. The boy sees the
bazaar at Araby as an opportunity to win her over, as a way to light the candle in her eyes. His
adolescence is an impediment to his quest and he lost for words to speak, as well as his lack of
experience to get through this moment. He fantasizes about her, how bringing her a gift from the
bazaar will capture her heart. He has promised her a gift and he anguishes over his uncle late
return home and his forgetfulness. Nevertheless, he is undeterred and catches an empty train to
reality. He finds Araby much like North Richmond Street, empty and dark with few people. The
female clerk at the booth ignores him while she flirts with the men. When she finally approaches,
he freezes in stare, transfixed by his awkwardness. As the woman turns and walks away, he
realizes the opportunity of winning his friends sister through a souvenir has slipped away. The
sensitive boy confused a romantic crush and religious enthusiasm and when he sees the bazaar is
closing down, he realizes that he has allowed his imagination to carry him away. He leaves
without a souvenir, feeling foolish and angry with himself. Anguish burns in his eyes as the cold
grip of reality takes hold of him as he fumbles with the coins in his pocket.
Araby is a story of first love; even more, it is a portrait of a world that defies the ideal and the
dream. James Joyce uses setting to symbolize a key concept of the story. The dark illusions the
boy experiences are all part of growing up. He is no longer young and naive, he has grown up
and become disappointed with life. Araby shows how we all get ideas about what may happen in
the near future and then feel disappointed with ourselves when nothing happens as expected.
The setting in Araby reinforces the theme and characters by using imagery of light and darkness.
The experiences of the boy in James Joyce’s Araby illustrate how people often expect more than
reality can provide and become disillusioned and disappointed. The author uses dark and obscure
references to make the boys reality of living in a gloomy town more vivid. He uses gloomy
references to create the mood of the story, and then changes to bright light references when
talking about Mangan’s sister. Darkness is used throughout the story as the prevailing theme.
Joyce begins the story at dusk and continues through the evening during the winter. He chooses
this depressing setting to be the home of a young boy who is infatuated with his neighbor’s
sister.
Light and darkness are two symbols present in Joyce‘s work; he uses darkness to make the boy’s
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reality more believable through more vivid precise descriptions. The dark illusion the boy
experiences are all part of growing up. The street is “blind”, it is a dead end and its inhabitants
are smugly content. Into this atmosphere of spiritual paralysis the boy bears, with blind hopes
and romantic dreams, his encounter with his first love. The “noises converged in a single
sensation of life” and with the blending of romantic and Christian symbols he transforms an
ordinary girl into and enchanted princess: untouchable, promising and saintly. Setting in this
scene depicts the harsh, dirty reality that the boy blindly and selfishly ignores. The contrast
between what is real and the boy’s dreams is ironically drawn and clearly foreshadows the boy’s
inability to keep the dream, and remain blind. Bright light is used to create a fairy tale world of
dreams and illusions. James Joyce uses the bright light when describing the boy’s infatuation for
Mangan’s sister. His obsession with her has taken complete control of his mind. Joyce refers to
bright light when describing the girl in order to give her a heavenly presence. The light is also
used to create a joyful atmosphere. The boy’s final disappointment occurs as a result of his
awakening to the world around him. The tawdriness of the bazaar, which in his mind had been an
“Oriental enchantment”, strips away his blindness and leaves him alone with the realization that
life and love differ from the dream. Araby, the symbolic temple of love, is profane. The ending
of the story is filled with images of both darkness and light. James Joyce uses the lights of the
bazaar to illustrate the boy’s confrontation with reality. The bazaar lights are almost all off,
because the bazaar is almost closed. This is significant because the boy wants the bazaar to be
bright and open, but instead it is dark and closing. This is when he finally realizes that life, just
like love, is not what he had dreamt it to be. He finds himself angry at life and disillusioned.
In Araby, Joyce suggests that all people experience frustrated desire for love and new
experiences.
This story has universal appeal because it speaks to the intense passion and awesome insecurity
of adolescence. The boy pursues his illusion (he doesn’t know anything about what is going to
happen and we don’t know actually what he expects to happen) in the face of great odds, but
when he is successful and finally reaches Araby, the achievement slips through his grasp. He
realizes for the first time the unbridgeable chasm between desire and reality