Arabay by James Joyce Essay

“Araby,” is a story of emotional passion carefully articulated by the author, James Joyce, to mark the end of childhood and the start of adolescence. It is told from the perspective of a young boy who is filled with lust for his friend, Mangan’s, sister. He lives in a cheerless town on a street hosting simply complacent families who own brown faced houses that stare vacantly into one another. The boy temporarily detaches himself from this gloomy atmosphere and dwells on the keeper of his affection. Only when he journeys to a festival titled Araby, does he realize that his attempt at winning the heart of Mangan’s sister has been done in an act of vanity. Joyce takes advantage of literary elements such as diction and imagery to convey an at times dreary and foolishly optimistic tone.

To begin with, the reader starts to notice that the narrator is obsessed with the boy when she refers to him as a god. The boy whom she has a crush on works at a local grocery store and anytime the narrator has a chance to sneak a glance of him, she jumps to the opportunity. The narrator refers to herself as “a pilgrim waiting for a glimpse of Mecca” (Cofer, page 47). The narrator demonstrates how she sees the boy as a god by referring to him as Mecca. The narrator is so enchanted by his looks that she gives divine characteristics to him, yet she doesn’t even know him or hasn’t ever talked to him. This shows that the narrator is oblivious to how the boy’s true personality might be and is star struck just by his looks. Furthermore, when the narrator realizes that her love works at the local supermarket, she forces herself and her brother to drink and eat more food not realizes the harm she is doing. She also hopes for her mother to smoke more cigars so she can go buy another packet and see her crush. The

Religion is a major theme in this novel. These themes have been developed by her introductions to Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen Burns, and St. John Rivers. They all have differing views of the afterlife and they both help and harm what she believes will happen after death.

The Theme of Religion in Angela’s Ashes Throughout the novel, religion is presented as being of extreme importance in Irish society, influencing the beliefs and actions of the characters. I will attempt to highlight the several factors which I believe make up the presentation of religion in “Angela’s Ashes”. From the beginning of the book, religion is said to make up a large part of the unhappy childhood Frank suffered. The following quote shows the extent of Frank’s sentiments: “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood, is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood”

”(Edmondson) Another theme of the story is religion. It’s a big one in this story because everybody has something that they believe even if their belief is nothing. The Christian characters aren’t exactly perfect Christians. Mrs.Hopewll doesn’t really care about the bible, she doesn’t even know where hers is.

Despite their differences in social status, Gabriel and the boy are similar in their emotional makeup. The narrator of “Araby” is a sensitive boy whose romantic notions are easily aroused and

The second thing that has an impact on protagonist’s life view is the culture and life in Dublin. But on the rest of the people from this city. Children have to go to Christian school, where the discipline is strict. That can be inferred from the very first sentence of the story:” North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.” Another thing that can be noticed about the boy’s religious belonging is in the way he acts: “All my senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: 'O love! O love!' many times.”(p. 434) This sentence can be interpreted as though he does the thing he is used to do every time he happens to be in difficult situation. These facts play a huge role in the forming of this boy's character and his life.

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.

Joyce's short story "Araby" is filled with symbolic images of a church. It opens and closes with strong symbols, and in the body of the story, the images are shaped by the young), Irish narrator's impressions of the effect the Church of Ireland has upon the people of Ire-land. The boy is fiercely determined to invest in someone within this Church the holiness he feels should be the natural state of all within it, but a succession of experiences forces him to see that his determination is in vain. At the climax of the story, when he realizes that his dreams of holiness and love are inconsistent with the actual world, his anger and anguish are directed, not toward the Church,

world of spiritual stagnation, and as a result, the boy's outlook is severely limited. He is ignorant and therefore innocent. Lonely, imaginative, and isolated, he lacks the understanding necessary for evaluation and perspective. He is at first as blind as his world, but Joyce prepares us for his eventual perceptive awakening by tempering his blindness with an unconscious rejection of the spiritual stagnation of his world.

In his short story "Araby", James Joyce portrays a character who strives to achieve a goal and who comes to an epiphany through his failure to accomplish that goal. Written in the first person, "Araby" is about a man recalling an event from his childhood. The narrator's desire to be with the sister of his friend Mangan, leads him on a quest to bring back a gift from the carnival for the girl. It is the quest, the desire to be a knight in shining armor, that sends the narrator to the carnival and it's what he experienced and sees at the carnival that brings him to the realization that some dreams are just not attainable.

In "Araby" by James Joyce, the narrator uses vivid imagery in order to express feelings and situations. The story evolves around a boy's adoration of a girl he refers to as "Mangan's sister" and his promise to her that he shall buy her a present if he goes to the Araby bazaar. Joyce uses visual images of darkness and light as well as the exotic in order to suggest how the boy narrator attempts to achieve the inaccessible. Accordingly, Joyce is expressing the theme of the boys exaggerated desire through the images which are exotic. The theme of "Araby" is a boy's desire to what he cannot achieve.

Dubliners by James Joyce, gives an exemplary look into his thoughts and ideas about Ireland in his time. He shows these ideas through the carefully crafted characters he writes through. The two characters from the stories, Araby and Eveline, are very common in what drives them and what the message is that Joyce is trying to get across. Araby, a boy who is looking to impress a girl he likes by buying her a gift at the market only to get there to late with too little money and Eveline, a girl trying to escape her life of taking care of her family after the mother passed away. Both are actively pursuing the life they wish they had and yet come up short.

Araby by James Joyce, at first, is an enlightening story of the strange actions of mankind. Although with further analysis, with the help of the articles certain symbols and similarities reveal themselves that clarify and add onto the story.

In the story of, "Araby" James Joyce concentrated on three main themes that will explain the purpose of the narrative. The story unfolded on North Richmond Street, which is a street composed of two rows of houses, in a desolated neighborhood. Despite the dreary surroundings of "dark muddy lanes" and "ash pits" the boy tried to find evidence of love and beauty in his surroundings. Throughout the story, the boy went through a variety of changes that will pose as different themes of the story including alienation, transformation, and the meaning of religion (Borey).