James Joyce - Araby Essay - 1136 Words

Essay Introduction to Literature An initiation in James Joyce’s story â€Å"Araby† Many times in life, people set unrealistic expectations for themselves or for other people. This is not a very wise thing to do because people often feel disappointed and embarrassed for getting their hopes up so high. One good example of this is the narrator in the short story â€Å"Araby† by James Joyce. In his brief but complex story James Joyce concentrates on character rather than on plot to reveal the ironies within self-deception. On its simplest level, Araby is a story about a boys first love. On a deeper level, it is a story about the world he lives in that is full of ideals and dreams. Araby is a story of initiation, of a boys quest for†¦show more content†¦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 infer red 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: â€Å"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 boys character and his life. Overvalue of boy’s attitude towards life in Araby is supported by the circumstances the boy had to face up with that are used as imagery of light and darkness. Darkness is used throughout the story as the prevailing theme. The boy is young and naive and he leads a du ll and boring life. Joyce uses dark and obscure references to make the boys reality of living in the gloomy town more vivid. Darkness, in addition to despair, represents the reality and truth in the narrators circumstances. The author uses dark references to create the mood or atmosphereShow MoreRelatedThe Power of Araby by James Joyce Essay1907 Words   |  8 Pagesabout is â€Å"Araby† by James Joyce. James Joyce does a great job creating vivid images in the readers mind and creates a theme that most of us can relate. In this paper I will be discussing five scholarly peer reviewed journals that also discusses the use of image and theme that James Joyce created in his short story â€Å"Araby†. Before I start diving into discussing these five scholarly peer review journals, I would like to just write a little bit about â€Å"Araby† by James Joyce. James Joyce is an IrishRead MoreEssay on Araby, by James Joyce676 Words   |  3 Pages 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 narrators 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 carnivalRead More Araby by James Joyce Essay620 Words   |  3 Pagesâ€Å"Araby† by James Joyce   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There seems to be a great deal of controversy surrounding the short story, â€Å"Araby† by James Joyce. This isn’t controversy dealing with various political issues or controversy involving issues of free speech or anything related to these things. It is of a more simple matter: whether the young boy in this story is capable of having a deep emotional realization at the conclusion of the story. It is obvious to me via the final sentence, (Araby, 398), that he does not makeRead MoreAraby, by James Joyce Essay942 Words   |  4 Pagesquot;Arabyquot; by James Joyce, is a short story about a young boys life and his quest to impress the young girl for whom he has feelings. The protagonists to the young boy, including the young girl, are the boys uncle, and the people at the Bazaar booth. The initial point of conflict occurs when the girl informs the boy that she cannot attend the bazaar, as she has every other year. quot;She could not go, she said, becau se there would be a retreat that week in her conventquot; (Joyce 106).Read MoreEssay on Araby, by James Joyce846 Words   |  4 Pages In his short story â€Å"Araby,† James Joyce describes a young boy’s first stirring of love and his first encounter with the disappointment that love and life in general can cause. Throughout the story Joyce prepares the reader for the boy’s disillusionment at the story’s end. The fifth paragraph, for example, employs strong contrasts in language to foreshadow this disillusionment. In this passage the juxtaposition of romantic and realistic diction, detail, and imagery foreshadows the story’sRead MoreInterpretive Questions for Araby by James Joyce Essay1049 Words   |  5 Pages Araby – Interpretive Questions 1. Joyce is not subtle in describing the setting as desolate and the adults as cold. There is a lifelessness that surrounds the boy: â€Å"musty†¦. waste littered†¦ somber houses†¦ cold†¦. †¦ silent street†¦ dark muddy lanes.† Adults are ghosts: â€Å"the boys are surrounded by â€Å"shades of people† whose houses â€Å"gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.† Joyce evokes an image of the Irish soul as cold and the street as uninhabited and detached, with the housesRead More Being Covered from the Truth in Araby by James Joyce Essay1097 Words   |  5 PagesBeing Covered from the Truth in Araby by James Joyce â€Å"Araby† by James Joyce, is a short story about a young boy trying to find and his search for inner happiness. The main setting takes place in the boy’s neighborhood where he lives with his aunt and uncle. The sub setting takes place in an Araby or English bazaar, a carnival if you will. In the neighborhood we find that there is; an uninhabited house that has not been occupied for some time, a girl, who’s referred to as ‘Mangan’s sister’Read MoreEssay on Comparison of A P by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce681 Words   |  3 Pages John Updikes â€Å"A P† and James Joyces â€Å"Araby† are very similar. The theme of the two stories is about a young man who is interested in figuring out the difference between reality and the fantasies of romance that play in his head and of the mistaken thoughts each has about their world, the girls, and themselves. One of the main similarities between the two stories is the fact that the main character has built up unrealistic expectations of women. Both characters have focused upon one girl inRead MoreAP by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce Essay examples856 Words   |  4 PagesThe two stories I chose are AP by John Updike and Araby by James Joyce. Both stories tell a tale of social and philosophical differences of middle class adolescent boys, when compared to the adults in the stories. In the short story AP by John Updike, the story is told in a first person narrative of a teenage boy working as a cashier in an AP grocery store on a hot summer day. The story begins with the teenage boy named Sammy becoming preoccupied by a group of three teenage girls that walkRead MoreParalysis In James Joyces Dubliners1086 Words   |  5 PagesHopefully this Essay is Slightly More Intelligible than Finnegan’s Wake: Dubliners Essay â€Å"To be or not to be, that is the question.† Hamlet’s famous quotation implies only two solutions: to be, or to not be. However, there is another option that Shakespeare never explored: to remain paralyzed between the two states, unable to commit to either. James Joyce’s Dubliners is a collection of short stories first published in 1914, that follows the inhabitants of Ireland. Published nearly a half a century