Category: Araby

Love perception is rather dynamic and could be presented in quite a few ways. Both ‘The Things They Carried’ with Tim O’Brien’s helpful resource, and ‘Araby’ with James Joyce’s helpful resource painting the lives of two compassionate people. ‘The Things They Carried’ is about a millennial lieutenant named Jimmy Cross during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Cross is unable to focus on the war because of his persistent thoughts about Martha, the girl he admired. ‘Araby’ is about a child who is obsessed with a woman he has not had an interaction with in any way.

Through the communication of letters between Lt. Jimmy Cross, and the midst of his Martha infatuation in ‘The Things They Carried,’ he allowed himself to appear as extra fascinated with the thought of her. The letters obviously reflected that the things Martha endured in her day by day-life, pieces of poetry she would read, didn’t contain a single word meaning she had feelings for him (O’Brien, 354). There isn’t an inkling of real feelings for Lt. Cross being concealed in Martha’s words, but she signs them with the word ‘love’ at the end of every letter. This is the gas which ignited the fire which flourished into his obsession. The style, in which she signs her letters alongside the good luck pebble she sends him, is sufficient for him to recognize that even though he is not there, she is thinking about him. Those two factors are enough to set his myth of having her wild. Since much of Lt. Cross’s time was spent glorifying a girl in his mind, it gave him the ability to ignore his platoon’s responsibilities. Fatal picks are made when the idea of Cross remains in the clouds internally. Had he perceived the letters strictly for what they were, life may also have been saved in the field of enabling his imagination to misinterpret phrases and sentences. The letters which can be intended to be a fine short relief from the harsh reality that he faces every day, are made in his thoughts to be her way of validating her love.

In ‘Araby,’ the appeal of fresh love and distant places combines with usual tedium experience, with challenging consequences. Mangan’s sister reflects this combination, given that she is adequately a portion of the narrator’s avenue’s familiar setting as the bazaar’s assurance of man or woman. She is a ‘brown figure’ who both presents the brown façades of the avenue-line buildings and conjures up the pores and skin color of Arabia’s idealized photo’s overflowing the head of the narrator. Like the bazaar that gives daily opportunities that don’t resemble Dublin, Mangan’s sister intoxicates the narrator with fresh feelings of joy and exhilaration. However, his affection for her has to contend with the dreariness of schoolwork, the absences of his uncle and the trains in Dublin. Though he promises Mangan’s sister to go to Araby to buy a gift for her, these everyday realities undermine his plans and obstruct his aspirations. The narrator then arrives at the bazaar to come across flowered teacups and English accents, not the compelling East’s liberty. As the bazaar closes, he understands that Mangan’s sister would also meet his hopes, and that his love for her is simply a futile preference for improvement in the most optimistic way.

One literary approach which has been utilized in this story is perspective. This is very important as it appears to be directed through a child’s potential when first studying the story, even as in fact it is well informed through a grown man’s capacity. ‘The other houses of the street, mindful of first-rate lives within them, gazing at one another with brown imperturbable faces’ There’s no way a child can write that well. This viewing aspect helps show what happened to the boy as he developed, and impacts the essence of the story. Another literary form used in ‘Araby’ is foreshadowing and imagery. The tale starts with ‘North Richmond Street,’ blindly transformed into a peaceful street barring the hour when the lads were set free by the Christian Brothers’ School. An uninhabited dwelling with two witnesses stood at the blind providing, separated in a rectangular ground from their peers. The avenue’s various properties, aware of first charge residing inside them, gazing at each other with imperturbable brown faces. ‘This sounds clear enough, and it often seems like something a reader might brush by, but in fact the paragraph is absolutely symbolic. The next sentence says ‘On the blind provide up stood an uninhabited house of two memories.’ This ‘uninhabited home’ is the fruits of a dead-quit lane. The author foreshadows the whole story in just two sentences in a powerful way, even if we don’t pick it up until the tale’s cessation.

In comparison, there is ‘The Things They Carried,’ which uses some of the same strategies in literature. In many instances Tim O’Brien used imagery and structure throughout the course of the plot. It now reveals the actual sense of what they carried, not the handiest, but also metaphorically the challenges they had psychologically. In the actual sense O’Brien speaks about what specific Vietnamese platoon individuals are. He begins developing by learning about requirements and moving gradually immediately to what they brought to remind them that there was a world outside of the war. ‘Among the requirements or close to requirements had been p-38 can openers, pocket knifes, warmness tabs, wrist watches, canines tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, stitching kits, Military Payment Certificates, C rations, and or three canteens of water’ (O’Brien). But as the story goes on it reveals certain items that were considered criteria for them even though they could be an advantage to someone else, consisting of Kiowa holding the hatchet of his grandfather. Obviously these are not necessities for many now but are one for them. The factor is that we all have emotional baggage to show the reader, we just lift it differently. The poetic strategy, point of view, is interesting not to forget in ‘The Things They Carried’ because of the reality of Tim O’Brien himself, recounting stuff that happened to him or his friends and comrades at some point in and after the Vietnam War. While the accounts are now and then some distance away from O’Brien’s non-public knowledge, at the same time as he tells a story that he or she learned from a third party, the fact that the narrator appears to be the same party as the author suggests an accuracy and sincerity and helps the reader not to forget O’Brien’s way of living as a component of the novel.

In conclusion, though every protagonist in ‘The Things They Brought’ and ‘Araby’ inevitably recognizes that the women they loved did not think of them the same way. Both of these characters are motivated by their fixation with women, whom they often know, on the other hand they affirm that they love them. Both these memories tell us that they use their obsessing and objectification of those girls to cowl their true emotions. In going back this provides an escape from life to the main characters.

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882. He was an Irish writer whose work is predominant in modern literature. He published a book of short stories called Dubliners, in 1914. Joyce’s “Araby” is the third short story in Dubliners (1914).

The part of this textual commentary presents the narrator-protagonist’s first amorous disappointment in youth. The motif of the heart perfectly incorporates the enveloping meaning of the narrator in his first amorous love . The theme of a first amorous love in “Araby” begins with adoration , continues with distraction and ends with anguish. .

The narrator-protagonist’s first experience of amorous love starts , as it often does in life, with adoration. We see evidence of this adoration in “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance” (30). At this moment , we hold the narrator temperaments furthermore his passion for the young girl is noticeable by the thoughts of the young boy.

In clear textual cohesion, progression, and thematization, the narrator- protagonist’s love for Mangan’s sister continues with distraction. The distraction is evident in the following : “Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side” (30) . Joyce is not thinking rationally of sex , allegedly he might not besides know what sex is . Accepting he is aware and agile of her physicality in a means that is predominantly idealized.

In this fragment of the textual commentary we contemplate the narrator-protagonist is discernible : “my lips”, “I myself”, “My eyes”, “(I could not tell why)”, “my heart”, “my bosom”. An appreciation of this fragment is that the narrator-protagonist exposes a bewilderment in the sentence in brackets : “(I could not tell why )”. He does not have words to reveal his affection. “Her” is additionally understandable in “Her name”.

We can perceive in this quote one proof of the motif of heart : “… a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom”. The admiration of love is demonstrated. The cohesion, progression, and thematization conclude when the narrator-protagonist’s experience of amorous love ends with anguish. The central evidence of the anguish reads as follows:” Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derived by vanity, and my eyes burned with anguish and anger”. (36).

The narrator attaches these words later refusing to come up with a present for Mangan’s sister that would get her acquires her love and assent. The fragment from archive . The extract from the paperwork affirms his lack of success and the ending of his dreams . The bazaar , Araby , existed in the storyteller’s intelligence as a location of elegance and fascinating as opposed to the annoyance of his life on North Richmond Street. To him it had the attractiveness of love affair.

The relator’s imaginations of Araby concur with his feelings of first love for Mangan’s sister. As he acquires information she desires to come along to the bazaar, yet cannot, he declarates to carry her a present from Araby. He quits upset and disappointing. He blames himself for thinking that in any case his story might restored more desirable in which he resided.

The short stories “Araby” and “Miss Brill” are very similar but also share many key differences. The narrators of both stories experience change throughout the duration of their stories, with the narrator of “Araby” actually ‘evolving’, in a sense. Both characters start the story off very confident and determined to fulfill their tasks. The protagonist in “Araby” is a very impressionable young boy who thinks highly of himself and has yet to experience the world. The narrator of “Miss Brill” is an older woman who feels likes to feel empowered by putting others down. By the end of both stories, both characters view themselves in a completely different light. Though the characters do some similarities in the personality changes they undergo, they are also still very different.

The narrator of Araby is a young boy, who has been deluded by unrequited love. At the beginning of the story, the narrator seems vulnerable to manipulation and jumps to very quick conclusions. He is vainly in love with a girl who he barely knows, and spends little time not obsessing about her. He sees her in almost an angelic sense describing her hair as a “soft rope,” that “tossed from side to side,” and saying that her “figure was defined by the light” (Joyce 1). The narrator fits in very well with the quest story arc that is described in Thomas C. Fosters’ “How to Read Literature Like a Professor”. He is the questor, and the stated reason for his mission is to buy his love a gift from the Araby bazaar, with his real reason being that he wants to win her over. The challenges he faces along the way also directly cause significant character changes in the story. He almost doesn’t make it to the bazaar, due to his uncle’s tardiness and when he gets there the nonchalant attitudes of the clerks, and the minute selection of the few stores open late bring to the realization that his ‘relationship’ with the girl doesn’t actually exist. He becomes very angry with himself, while also realizing the error of his ways.

Miss Brill, an elderly lady, is very confident and set in her ways of going to the park on Sundays. While there she often judges people’s clothing and imagines storylines for them, based on what they look like. For example, when she overhears an old English couple talking and doesn’t like the content of their conversation, she insults their clothing and “wants to shake her” (Mansfield 2). Then, a young couple enters and sits next to her, insulting her and her precious fur, which is the source of her confidence. After they insulted her, calling her necklet things like “silly old mug,” and saying it resembled a piece of fried whiting, she goes home. This was very unusual, since every Sunday on her way home, she stops at the bakery for a slice of cake. She reaches home, changed, and self-conscious about it replaces her fur to sit in its box. As she sits in the dark, she depressingly reflects on herself and the things she says about others.

The protagonists of the two short stories both go through changes that are very similar through the course of the stories. After the significant events happen in “Araby”, the narrator saw himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity,” and his eyes “burned with feelings of anguish and anger” (Joyce 5). After Miss Brill is teased by the young couple, she goes home feeling depressed and puts what she thought was her best fur back in its box, feeling self-conscious. Both characters feel versions of self-resentment, with the young boys being more aggressive and immature, and Miss Brill’s being more melancholy. They are also both deluded, led astray by their overactive imaginations. While Miss Brill critiques and creates stories off visual impressions, the star of “Araby” creates a love from nothing and drives himself crazy trying to fill the girl’s material needs. And after their fantasies came crashing down, they both started to feel the aforementioned feelings of self-pity.

Though there are many similarities between the two bodies of work, many differences can also be highlighted. During the story, both characters are misled by their overactive imaginations. The young boy of “Araby” overreacts to a flirtatious young girl and is disappointed when the future he planned with her doesn’t materialize. But unlike Miss Brill, who is old and set in her ways, he still has time to learn. The boy can take his experiences and learn from them, turning them int a life lesson. However, Miss Brill has lived through the course of her life being an observant and judgmental introvert and doesn’t have much value in changing the error of her ways. Another difference between the two characters is while “Araby’s” protagonist fits Foster’s hero archetype, Miss Brill’s plotline doesn’t have all the necessary elements to be classified as a ‘quest’. The protagonist of “Araby” is the questor, and the stated reason for his mission is to buy his love a gift from the Araby bazaar, with his real reason being that he wants to win her over. The story also includes challenges along his journey. ‘Miss Brill” on the other hand lacks the presence of a place to go, reasons to go there, and items to be received once she [Miss Brill] arrives.

In both stories, the characters end with a different view of themselves. Although the two stories are different, they have similarities. They are both highly imaginative people, who lose touch of what is imaginary and tangible. Bu the way events unfold are very different, and the end results are also dissimilar.

James Joyce’s short story “Araby,” centers on a young boy, who mistakes obsession with love. The narrator, an unnamed adolescent, lives with his uncle and aunt in Dublin. He believes that he is in love with a girl, Mangan’s sister, but all of his actions and thoughts show that it is in fact infatuation. Joyce is illustrating the danger of confusing infatuation with love, through characterization, symbolism, and setting, in order to warn the devastation that it could bring to an innocent boy.

Throughout the story, the narrator’s doomed obsession and worship of Mangan’s sister are made evident throughout the story by way a variety of devices Joyce employs. Notably, his obsession and worship of her get in the way of his everyday life, typified as the narrator tells the reader that “every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. This happened morning after morning.” (Joyce 1). This is clearly marked as an obsession rather than a healthy romantic interest as Joyce makes clear that the narrator is a young boy, who has more experience playing out on the street with his boyish friends than with getting to know a woman. In what is typically described by literary critics as a “young romantic’s bitter first taste of reality” (Coulthard 97), the central surface level story in “Araby” involves an eventual realization by the boy that his obsession was a foolish waste of time, described in the final lines as a “vanity” (Joyce 5).

Furthermore, his infatuation for her is demonstrated to the reader by a contrast between the boy’s inexperienced “attempts at beauty, love, faith, and belonging” (Collins 84) and the ways in which his longing is clearly interrupting his normal life. The boy seems to unwittingly reveal to the reader how his obsession has created a distraction in both his school life and also his home life: “I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read” (Joyce 2). The reader sees that this is not really love, and that his longing is in vain, but the narrator fails to see this until the very end. As Collins summarizes this contrast: “In short, the symbols which are clear to the reader have not yet revealed themselves to the lad” (Collins 84).

These symbols are explicitly used by Joyce to heighten the sense of worship for more an ideal than an actual person through the use of religious symbolism to resemble the boy’s desire for Mangan’s sister. Seeming to act as an idol, Mangan’s sister is completely idealized into a religious symbol of love and romance rather than any realistic attempt at a relationship. When the narrator says “I pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love! O love!’ many times” (Joyce 2), it is obvious that symbolism of prayer and worship, as of a priest, is being used to heighten the contradiction between the actual reality of the boy’s experience with the girl and his hopes and perceptions.

In the scene when the boy heads to the market with his aunt, the image of Mangan’s sister is with him in his mind, and the religious imagery is continued, as Stone notes “The image of Mangan’s sister becomes his sacred chalice; he guards it as he makes his way through the alien marketplace” (Stone 388). This only further confirms that the boy’s object of desire and worship is in fact merely the image of Mangan’s sister, which exists only in his mind, rather than the living person, flesh and blood. It is notable that the narrator appears to be concerned with keeping the image of her safe “through a throng of foes” (Joyce 2), while the real supposed object of his affections is presumably somewhere else. It is, therefore, the idea of love that the boy worships, rather than actually being in love.

As the story closes with the notable lines: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger” (Joyce 5), the narrator finally understands what has been signaled clearly to the reader all along, and the hopelessness and hollowness of his obsessions, which was not genuine love, is revealed to him. This is the representative turn that has often been interpreted as the autobiographical disillusionment of Joyce himself (Coulthard 98). Indeed, the language of “darkness” and even “eyes” is a deliberate reference the imagery that dominates the opening section of the story, when North Richmond Street is described as “blind” (Joyce 1) and the world of the boy’s childhood is riddled with shadows and darkness. It is now clear to the narrator as well as the reader that this darkness was in fact ignorance, from which the boy has been rudely awakened. He sees as the close of the story that what he took for love, the pure concept of love that he even worshipped, was a hollow trick, much as the bazaar Araby itself was a disappointment and ingenuine reproduction of something grand and beautiful.

“Araby,” therefore can be most confidently read as a cautionary story regarding innocence and the dangers it can bring to romantic concepts like love. In the context of ignorant innocence, what is seen as love can become an unhealthy obsession which interferes with a normal everyday life and is ultimately empty and without meaning.

James Joyce’s story Araby is about a boy(the storyteller) in his energy, enthralled by a youngster in his neighborhood. His feelings keeps faltering among this present reality and nostalgic dreams. This story occurs in the late eighteenth/mid nineteenth century Dublin, on north Richmond street, a stalemate street with a couple of dim hued houses and a Christian Brothers school. The story starts with the depiction of the dull and hopeless atmosphere the storyteller is incorporated by. Later in the story, the storyteller comprehends that the feelings he has for the youngster are whimsical and is left baffled.

The storyteller lives in a two story house on the north Richmond street with his uncle and aunt, some time prior included by a pastor who is dead now. The house is in a square ground, kept from the neighboring dull dim hued houses. The street is commonly quiet beside when the youngsters from the Christian Brother School are freed. By saying that the street is regularly quiet, potentially the storyteller needs to pass on that there are no open spaces, no light and no life, beside the sounds everyone in the street is generally busy with his/her very own life or maybe there are just two or three people living in the street, not wanting to speak with one another. Here the storyteller uses negative implications related to the street from which one can assume that he is pitiful and downfall, he moreover observes the pulverization everywhere. The storyteller by then depicts of within the deceived house, cold void barren rooms which symbolize downfall and stagnation.

It is the winter sunset and the Children including the storyteller are messing around in the porch of the territory, which completions since one of the child named Mangan was gotten for tea by his sister. This is a comparable youngster the storyteller has expressions of love for. He keeps loving Mangan’s sister and depicts his astounding and clear obsession with her. Regardless of the way that the storyteller can’t explain what he is encountering, he uses portrayals and relationships with pass on what necessities be. ‘my body took after a harp, and her words looked like fingers running upon the wires.’ He neither had guts to speak with her, nor to give her a chance to understand that he had expressions of love for her. He always expected to talk with her anyway demonstrated unfit, still, her name rustled up some fervor to all his ‘moronic blood’. Right when Mangan’s sister finally warning the child, she shimmers from the including dimness: ‘The light from the light reverse our gateway got the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that revived there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing.’ She began the discourse, asking the storyteller whether he would go to the Araby bazaar and says that shes couldn’t go because she has a best in class severe event in her school. Thusly, the storyteller promises her that if he gets to the bazaar, he will get something for her. The Narrator was back home and mentioned leave to go to the bazaar from his aunt. Mangan’s sisters was a strategies for mental break for the storyteller, he could simply gaze vacantly at nothing in particular about her. The storyteller starts to fantasize about the Araby publicize. The principle differentiate between Araby bazaar and Mangan’s sister was that the Araby bazaar didn’t simply offer a mental break to the storyteller, yet what’s more was a spot he could go.

It is Saturday night and the storyteller is believing that his uncle will appear. He is starting at now predicting that something may turn out gravely. He was being enthusiastic which indicates that he is up ’til now a youngster and has legitimate tendencies and yet thinks about the issues, for instance, commitment and alcohol misuse his uncle is overseeing, losing his guiltlessness and understanding the adult world. It was nine o’clock around night time when his uncle was back home and gave the storyteller some money with the objective that he could go to the bazaar. The Narrator went to the station and took a below average class carriage seat of a left train. He landed at the Araby bazaar, yet most of the shops there were closed. He by then decides not to buy anything from the bazaar. This was the vital dissatisfaction he gone up against: ‘Gazing upward into the dimness I believed myself to be a creature driven and gathered by vanity, and my eyes duplicated with anguish and shock.’ He felt beguiled by his desires and visualizations. Araby left the child with a dull and hopeless tendency.

The imagery of light and diminish is the most extraordinary imagery used in Araby. The whole story takes after a play of light and lack of definition. Cloudiness is used to delineate the child’s existence, while Joyce uses light to depict his illusionist world. Right when the story begins it starts with the dull and quiet condition, yet when the storyteller looks at Mangan’s sister, he changes his remarks to marvelous light, to make an imaginary world of dreams and double dealing. The present lack of definition in the storyteller’s life shows that the storyteller’s internal or sanctified acknowledges are rank and diminish. Into this universe of lack of definition makes a mockery of Mangan’s sister, a figure illustrative of the light. She is used as a multifaceted nature to the storyteller’s duskiness, hanging out in storyteller’s diminish condition. His lively imaginative personality believes her to be a figure delegate continually included by light: ‘The light from the light backwards our door got the white twist of her neck’. This gets confides in the storyteller that in her love, he’ll find the light. The storyteller uncovers to us that he is so focused on her that he can see her image: ‘around night time in my room and by day in the examination corridor, her image isolated me and the page I attempted to scrutinize’. To give Mangan’s sister a magnificent proximity, Joyce insinuates light while depicting her.

Both Mangan’s sister and the Araby market offers a takeoff from this present reality, from the peaceful and dull street and from the ordinary to the storyteller. The most huge activity of imagery is close to the completion of the story, in the bazaar. Both of the imagery appear together, yet the completion of the story is proportional to the beginning, diminish. Right when the youngster gets some data about the bazaar, he loosed eagerness for his examinations, school and everything around him. He keeps contemplating the youngster and the Araby. Her ‘Dull house’ and ‘ her darker clad figure reached by lamplight’ are the fundamental things he could see. He acknowledge that in case he gets the youngster he worships, his life would be stacked up with light and there would be no more dimness in his life. He goes to Araby, accepting that he would interest her by getting her a gift from bazaar. The lights of the bazaar are used here to speak to the storyteller’s experience with this present reality. In the wake of landing at the Bazaar, the storyteller foresees that it ought to be open and lit up… Or then again perhaps,’ about all of the backs off were closed and the greater part of the passage was in dinkiness’. After he sees a couple of lights he recalls the clarification he was there ‘seeing the streets..glaring with gas explored to me the inspiration driving my journey’. regardless, the light is there for a concise period . Finally, the cloudiness is seen again: ‘the light was out’, ‘the upper bit of the whole was by and by thoroughly dull’, the child is ‘turning upward into the obscurity’. With reference to lack of definition, Joyce gives us that the storyteller is perplexed. The dull imagery here shows that when the storyteller finds that the bazaar wasn’t really what he expected, he finds that his warmth is also delusionary. Here Joyce intensely reveals how the little youth commandingly gains

The story starts and completes with the light-diminish complexities. As the storyteller comprehends that the market was not truly fascinating and was not an authentic break from this present reality, he moreover comprehends that his sentiment of amazing affection for Mangan’s sister was a fake escape rather than a genuine journey to new places. ‘Araby’ closes with a breaking disclosure which results in the affirmation and the improvement of the little adolescent.

“Araby” by James Joyce is a short story whose basic external story is easy to follow. However, typical of Joyce, it is actually deeply layered allegorical story, with autobiographical themes and references to medieval, religious, and classic references. Though when the story is read for the first time it appears to simply be a commonplace tale of a boy’s first obsessive love for a woman he barely knows, many of the details of the narrative locate it in a much broader context the medieval romance story, where unrequited love and the knightly quests often take a central role. This structure, in combination with Orientalist and medieval themes of obsession and devotion, are revealed by the final turn of the story for their misguided nature.

“Araby” begins with an extended description of North Richmond Street, a real street where Joyce himself grew us as a boy in Dublin. This immediately marks it as an autobiographical tale, but the imagery of this opening section is equally important. Starting right off by describing the street as “blind,” and then describing the houses like human beings, which “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (Joyce 1), the imagery of darkness, opacity, and blindness continues through this first section. Setting the story during the “short days of winter” (Joyce 1), the setting is described as “silent,” “dark,” “rough,” and “odorous,” and shadows are cast everywhere (Joyce 1).

In the middle of this opening description is an apparently unrelated anecdote about a tenant at Joyce’s house, a priest who has recently died in his room. But this anecdote, besides furthering the objective of creating a dark atmosphere, has a critical purpose in establishing the broader context of the story. Joyce names three books the boy finds in the dead priest’s room, The Abbot by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The Memoirs of Vidocq. Harry Stone identifies these three texts as critical to interpreting the meaning of the story the follows in his analysis of “Araby”, noting that “lurking incongruities” of these books serve to unlock the motives of the central character (Stone 352). The first two books can be seen as suggesting religious themes, whereas the third, which the boy notably tells the reader he liked “best because its pages were yellow” (Joyce 1) is a sexualized memoir by a social deviant.

Leaving this introductory scene-setting and beginning the action of the story is the appearance of one of the boy’s friend’s sisters into the narrative. This moment is when there is a clear division of the story into the long-established structure of medieval romance stories, which have four major sections (Mandel 48). First, the naïve childhood section is disrupted secondly by the appearance of the lady whose presence is central to the events of the story. Following this, the knight pledges himself in some form of quest to the lady who has become the object of his devotion, and the fourth section in this structure is the fulfillment of the quest. It is through this basic genre structure that “Araby” can be best interpreted.

Throughout the story, the religious theme first suggested by the priest is elaborated with Joyce’s imagery, creating the impression that Mangan’s sister is to the boy not only a lady of romantic devotion, but even some kind of religious icon. Into the childhood world of shadow and blindness comes this divine feminine figure, repeatedly described as being illuminated almost like a halo as seen in typical religious icons in the Catholic Church, especially in depictions of the Virgin Mary: when she is first introduced with “her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door” (Joyce 1), and when the two first speak, sending the hero on his quest, as “the light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there” (Joyce 2).

The nature of the quest itself is also significant. Not only has the boy’s religious devotion (“O love! O love!”) (Joyce 2) given way to a real-world quest to prove himself to the lady, its real-world situation runs in parallel with the medieval reference it makes. The boy commits to journey across town to an eastern bazaar called Araby, an old word for Arabia. When this faraway, exotic goal is introduced to him, the boy says: “The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me” (Joyce 2). This phase of the medieval romance story now takes on an additional layer of significance with references to the medieval Crusades.

Overzealous knights, perhaps on the promise of quests to some lady of their devotions, or out of religious devotion (and Joyce appears to intentionally equate these two in “Araby”), would travel a far distance primarily to secure a kind of “token” of the east. The actual Araby bazaar, an even that occurred in Dublin in 1894, was marketed from the beginning as an Orientalist attraction to a European audience (Ehrlich 312). In a similar way, the attraction of the Crusades, or one of its principal effects, can be understood to be the birth of European Orientalism, obsessing over the exotic “East”.

Curiously, as Ehrlich notes, the actual Araby bizarre in 1894, which Joyce was known to have attended, was remembered in Dublin as a lively festival of music and dancing, a “major public event,” rather than “the boy’s juvenile misconception of the Araby bazaar as primarily a place where keepsakes are sold” (Ehrlich 312) as it is portrayed at the end of the story. Yet this apparently strange contradiction with what is otherwise a clearly autobiographical story is resolved when the Araby bazaar is viewed as a stand-in for the “Arabia” and “East” of the crusader knights on quests. Blindly setting out on a single minded quest to secure some token (control of a holy relic, for example, shown by the religious allusions throughout the story), the lively atmosphere of the actual Near East, with its culture, economy, and so on is missed in favor of a “keepsake” to fulfill a quest of medieval unrequited love.

This is the context in which the apparently absurd and dramatic final line in the narrator’s story can be understood, in which the boy, having reached his objective and found it empty sees himself as a “creature driven and derided by vanity” (Joyce 5). It is at this point and only at this point that the medieval romance structure is subverted. The quest’s objective is not achieved, no token is acquired at the bazaar and the maiden that drove the narrative appears to be forgotten. Therefore, though the whole of “Araby” can be analyzed as an autobiographical story of misguided boyhood love told through the lens of the medieval romance tale, the Orientalist parallel with the crusades leads to the final line of the story, which subverts the rest of the form, as the volta of a sonnet provides a surprising “turn” to the rest of the text.

The coming of age short story, “Araby” chronicles a young boy’s life as he navigates adolescence, and the emotions that come with it. The exposition kicks off with the narrator, an unknown boy, describing the setting. The story takes place in the winter of an Irish neighborhood during the early 19th century. The narrator lives on North Richmond street, a blind, quiet area. He inhabits a home that was once occupied by a priest with his Uncle and Aunt. Like a typical young boy, the narrator enjoys spending the short days of winter playing outside with his friends and exploring the world around him. An Infatuation for his friend Mangan’s sister begins to blossom within him as he observes her calling Mangan in for tea. From the days following, his desire for her grows stronger. Though he is falling in love with her, he veils his feelings for her, and experiences internal conflict as to whether to confront her with his adoration.

The rising action occurs when they finally speak. After discovering that she is not able to go the Araby, he promises to bring her back a trinket. From that moment on, he becomes obsessed with getting her a gift. His passion to obtain the perfect gift distracts him from his school work and leads him to believe that everything else is child’s play. External conflict arises as his teacher reprimands him for becoming to idle with his studies. On the day of the Araby, he angrily awaits for his Uncle’s arrival to give him money for the train fare there. When his Uncle arrives late, external conflict occurs between the narrator and his uncle as they discuss the ability for the narrator to go. When is uncle finally agrees to let him go, The narrator anxiously awaits his arrival to the Bazaar.

The climax occurs once the narrator arrives at the Bazaar. When he comes late, he realizes that the lights are off, and that the Araby is almost over. He notices a lady, though, who is selling items. When he goes up to the lady, he encounters her rude personality, and is discouraged to buy Mangan sister a gift. The falling action occurs when the narrator lingers at the stall, though he knows that his stay is useless. The Resolution occurs when the Narrator is defeated, and comes to the conclusion that nothing he will do will ever win over her heart.

Araby is a short story written by James Joyce about a boy from Dublin, Ireland; who falls in love with neighbor girl. When the narrator finds the library left behind by the former tenant narrator is left intrigued. When the girl narrator infatuates about asks him if he is going to certain baazar, narrator promises her to bring back something to try and impress her. Whatsoever, his plan delays and after finally reaching the market, if finds that market is not as how he imagined it, which forces him to reflect on his own life, his infatuation towards the girl. Sometimes our disillusionment could give rise to self-awakening.

The main protagonist of the story the narrator himself, develops a crush on Mangan’s sister. Which to him is not something he has felt before, as depicted in the story, “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes” (111) we can analyze that narrator created the fantasy in which she is sacred and pure, and we see that narrator experiences his crush on religious aspect. “The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lip up the hand upon the railing.” (112) In narrator’s fantasy world, she is like an angel, only light that narrator could see in the dark Dublin setting. Mangan’s sister to narrator is an escape from dull Dublin street, and everything else is a backdrop to him.

The main conflict of the story is narrator’s imagination versus his reality. Narrator longs for his reality to match his fantasy world. Engrossed in his fantasy, everyday activities are mundane; and only thing that drives him forward is seeing Mangan’s sister. The external conflict is his surrounding, dull Dublin street. “When we met in the street the houses had grown somber.” (110) We can see the narrator choice of using darker adjectives to describe his surrounding which reflects the darkness of his world. The imagery of his surrounding is monotonous; therefore, he tries to find an alternative to his “blind” street.

Araby takes place on a quite North Richmond street, in Dublin, Ireland surrounded by old rustic buildings, by establishing this setting, it provides us with essential and vital facts to help us discover important details of the story, and these details are evident throughout the story. Narrator has spent his adolescent life playing in the street of Dublin, and we can visualize the street, and how he uses them to define emotions attached with it. I think the most important setting is where the Araby baazar takes place. As baazar is described as dark, lifeless place, as it is already late and most of the shops are closed. Since going to baazar was part of narrator imaginary world; which he thought so highly of, upon realizing the gloominess of the baazar that adolescent boy is forced towards his first step toward the adulthood.

Joyce uses first person narrative point of view to tell the story. Since the story is told from the perspective of adolescent boy and how he views the world around him. By using first person narrative it illuminates the experience of the character, and it makes reader easier to understand the inner life of the character, and it also gives us insight of how a character comes a certain conclusion. In the case of Araby, we can understand how a young boy is on a religious quest, to win the love of a girl, who from a narrator perspective is a representation of an angel, and how going to market is like pilgrimage.

As language is integral part which embodies the story’s essence. We can see the author’s choice of word, setting, and character which reflects the tone of the story and character dynamics. As per the story, we can analyze that the narrator is pessimistic even in his bland and gloomy world, and Joyce’s use of imagery and symbolism depicts the story in such way which is open to any interpretation. But mainly I liked Joyce’s use of metaphor to describe the setting and minor character, Mangan’s sister; in which she is described in religious aspect. From these use of metaphor we can infer that narrator finds himself in religious quest, where as a girl is representation of angel, and he is her devotee.

Araby is story which shows us the contrast of darkness and light. From narrator’s abandon blind street houses to Araby baazar, from the point of view of narrator they are all bland and dull. Therefore, he tries to find a sense of escape from his dark world, through his fantasy, he creates a world where a girl he infatuates for is only light that he can see in his adolescent world. Although as a result of his illusion he is forced to contemplate his fantasy and come to a realization that he is fooling himself through his imagination of how the world should be rather than how the world really is.

There are many impacting written pieces that contribute to the different images of the status of self. However, with the many varying narratives and tones by the authors who have written these pieces, some may provide a contrast with others. An example of this contrast is the division in the status of self is between childhood and adulthood as it develops in twentieth-century literature. Literary pieces such as James Joyce’s “Araby” and Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” perfectly demonstrates this divide through their different tones and structures: with Joyce’s piece representing the innocent and impressionable child through an overdramatization of the events that transpire before Araby; and Sexton’s piece representing the pessimistic view of the adult through the bitter tone of the narrative as she tells the different stories of happy endings that cease to exist in real life. Both pieces overall have very similar ideas of where a child’s sense of self lies from in terms of the fairy-tale stories they read growing up, which differs from the adult’s sense of self that develops through life experiences.

James Joyce’s “Araby” creates an impact in the image of the sense of self in preteens who are going through puberty. Joyce depicts the protagonist as an impressionable young man who lusts over Mangan’s sister. At the start of the story, the narrator mentions some of the books that the boy had read at the dead priest’s home; one of which being The Abbot by Walter Scott. Scott’s novel depicts the life of Mary Stuart in a fabricated way and it influences the way that the protagonist views romance, leading him to develop a fantasy surrounding Mangan’s sister although they had never spoken before; “This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 281) In this subtle way, Joyce depicts the child as easily influenced especially with the boy lacking experience in the subject of love. At the end of the story, the boy is left disappointed by the event of Araby. Araby represents the boy’s maturity and his first step into adulthood. The boy realizes that he only loved Mangan’s sister for the image that he had created in his head and not for what she truly is; “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.” (Joyce 283)

Anne Sexton’s “Cinderella” depicts the adult version of the sense of self. Sexton uses tone and line breaks in order to show the bitter and pessimistic attitude of the adult towards the different stories that she tells. The poem starts with “You always read about it” (Sexton 1) introducing a sense of familiarity with the tales that she continues to talk about. Sexton talks about the people that have gone from impoverished to rich through lucky incidents that had happened to them. Sexton finishes each stanza with “That story,” (Sexton 5) which adds to the bitter tone of the poem; introducing a comparison of the tale and the reality of how hard people have to work in order to lead successful lives. Sexton also utilizes line breaks and punctuation to emphasize how quickly the unfortunate people became successful, undermining the years of hard work that they had to endure with some simple act such as being in a bus accident; “Or the charwoman / who is on the bus when it cracks up / and collects enough from the insurance.” (Sexton 17-19) The sentence that comes after each story compares two very different things representing from where they came from to where they ended up at; “From mops to Bonwit Teller.” (Sexton 20-21) to illustrate how quickly the change becomes. The bitter tone continues in the telling of Cinderella, accompanied by dark themes throughout the story. Sexton chooses to use the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella, which is geared more towards adults than children due to the more gruesome images that comes with it. The telling of the Cinderella towards adults is not much different from the one that is geared towards children. The story of Cinderella still creates a sense of hope in which one will get what one deserves; Cinderella becoming a princess due to her compassion towards others and her stepsisters suffering due to their selfishness. Sexton ends the poem with “That story” once again, to illustrate her skepticism towards the moral of the story, introducing the aspect of comparison with any other stories but.

Joyce and Sexton both support the themes of the impressionable child and the skeptical adult. Although the child and the adult are illustrated very differently, they also have similarities between them. Both authors utilize the image of books and fairy tales to create a sense of how they influence many people, both children and adults. Albeit the children’s books are less realistic than the adult’s, most books from both age groups introduce the aspect of hope within them. In “Araby”, the boy learns in the end that his fantasies stem from vain, distinguishing the line between reality and fantasy. In “Cinderella”, Sexton continues with that line between reality and fantasy, but keeps the aspect of hope within each tale that she tells. The child learns through his experiences but keeps the hope that the fairy tales introduce in order to get through sufferings as an adult. The hope of a happy ending is what gets most people through their ordeals, no matter how old they are.

The theme of the sense of self varies in each piece of literature, whether it be a coming-of-age story or a poem about the skepticism of the adult. Joyce and Sexton creates a contrast between the child and the adult within their respective pieces. The boy in “Araby” learns that he was motivated by the image that he had created in his own head, not knowing the reality of his situation due to his lack of experience. The adult in “Sexton” is skeptical towards each tale that she tells, adding a bitter little sentence that compares the tale to reality. Albeit both characters are different, they both support the theme of hope in the books that they explore within the pieces; whether the books are geared towards the old or the young. The aspect of hope in each story helps one get through their hardships, with the promise of at least a better ending than their current situation.

The Short story “Araby” by James Joyce, are told from the point of view of a young boy. The author James is one of the most famous writers throughout the 1900’s and the end of War II. The boy, whose name was never exposed, lives in North Richmond Street and was described as “being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian Brothers’ School set the boys free.” This is when they reveal that the boy lives in in the former home of the priest that has passed away in the back drawing-room. The narrator reveals that he’s in love with Mangan’s sister, which turns out to be his best friend sister. Yet, Joyce, didn’t use any descriptive language the way the boy felt towards Mangan’s sister. The readers were able to understand the boy’s feelings by his act, such as “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen.” Furthermore, he tells of his venture to Araby to get her a gift, since she is unable to attend with him. Throughout the boy’s love, and inspired adventure in the short story “Araby” the boy has attractive characteristics in his personality, such as; alertness, passion, sensitiveness and impatient.

The first attractive trait the boy display is alertness. One of his signs of him being vigilance is when he describes the way the priest used to be, when he lived in the house before him. The narrator describes the priest as “a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.” The boy also runs into some paper-covered books the former priest that left in the house. Some of the former belongings he found were “old useless papers and a curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant and The Memoirs of Vidocq. The boy describes the street as “being blind” and from that he is using the impression as he is not happy where he currently lives.

The boy has excellent attentiveness, once he went to the back-drawing room where the priest had died. He notices: “It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth.” The boy is always noticing the tiniest details and his surroundings throughout the story and his trip to the bazaar.

The young boy displays passion throughout the story. Yet, he’s only passionate for a girl, which turns out to be his friend’s sister. In fact, the boy becomes obsessed with her that he slowly turns out to be somewhat of a stalker: “Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlor watching her door.” The boy is in love with Mangan’s sister, but he barley even knows her. Thus, when he finally has a conversation with her, about going to the bazaar Araby, it caused him to become puzzled.

Although he hasn’t spoken to her, the more he thinks of her the worse he obsession gets: “When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her.” The more he thinks of her the harder it is for him to get her out of his mind” “Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance.” He found love at first sight, for example “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. He’s picturing the future with her even though they haven’t had an conversation or been acknowledge.

Another appealing characteristic is that the boy is particularly sensitive. Towards the beginning of the short story, the narrator introduces his admiration for Mangan’s sister with much deeper sentiment than those of most teenage crushes: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom.” The boy is stunned by the unfathomable love he feels for Mangan’s sister. The more he sees her the more nervous he gets, for instance: “I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.

When he first come across with Mangan’s sister, the narrator describes the powerful emotions he experienced during the evening right before the bazaar. “I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the word Araby were called to me.” In retrospect, the boy anticipation would end up setting himself up for a superior disappointment, nevertheless it was his sensitive nature that let these emotions consume every moment of his life.

The last appealing characteristic the boy has is impatient. The boy is determined to go to a bazaar, named Araby to bring her a gift. Ms. Mercer made a dinner and still has not showed up. Mrs. Mercer stood up and “was sorry she couldn’t wait any longer, but it was after eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late as the night air was bad for her.” Therefore, that upset the boy and that’s when he “began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said: ‘I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.’

The boy’s uncle drinks heavily and was extremely late getting home on the night the boy wanted to go to Araby. He waited an interminable amount of time till the clock hit at nine o’clock his uncle arrived. The boy knew his uncle was drunk since he heard “him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs. When he was midway through his dinner, I asked him to give me the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.” When he asked his uncle for money and pretends, he’s forgotten about his trip, his aunt argues on the boy’s behalf. “Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.”

The boy’s uncle apologized, and said he’s forgotten but he believed on an old saying: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Which means that it is not good to work all the time, and people may get bored if they don’t get a day off from work. The boy was so impatient since he has promise to bring her a gift. Finally, when he received the money from his uncle, he “left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.”

The delay to Araby and the long ride on the train causes the boy to become aggravated. Once he arrives to the bazaar, he’s fearing that bazaar would be closed: “Nearly all the stalls were closed, and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service.” The more he walked towards the middle of the bazaar he noticed “two young gentlemen, with English accents” and a female engaged in the conversation. She turned to the boy and asked if he would like to buy anything, yet, he turns to her and says: “No, thank you.”

The boy finally realizes his true feelings towards Mangan’s sister and his desired Araby is just a simple dark bazaar. The boy realizes that he does not need a gift to express his love for her, he gives up instead. The boy experiences emotional growth, changing from a young teen boy to a starry-eyed adolescent in an instant. Joyce, called it “epiphany,” the boy finally understands that he allowed his feelings to get carried away. The boy was disappointed and angry at himself for acting the way he was acting. The boy “gazed up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”

The young boy in the short story “Araby” is an amiable protagonist what also suffers both isolation and hostility. Since the boy has multiple personality traits such as; alertness, passion, sensitiveness and very impatient. The conflict all happens on the boy’s mind. The boy never shared his feelings towards Mangan’s sister to anyone. Mangan’s sister is also completely unaware of the boy feelings for her. However, Joyce’s epiphany shows on the last paragraph of the short story, for example: I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar.”