Araby by James Joyce

Kelsea Hughes

April 22, 2016

Composition II

Short Story Analysis

Araby

        “Araby” is a short story written by James Joyce, a prominent Irish poet and novelist of the early 20th century. His life in the brown, dull streets of Dublin inspired his writing, especially in the themes of desire for far-away places and creating characters who resembled his own family, friends, and even enemies. In “Araby”, we encounter an emotional tale of a nameless boy, who ventures off to a nearby bazaar in hopes of finding his exotic escape from home with hopes of impressing his hopeless crush. We are allowed to experience the story of a young boy whose innocence is, in a sense, lost in the dark. Joyce is able to weave the boy’s mundane life within his daydream fantasies, and ultimately his tragedy. We learn from the boy in “Araby”, most notably how he will act based on his heart and ignore his logical reason, but also how these actions will never lead him too far away from what is considered to be his personal destiny.

        The story begins with a description of the setting. The boy feels emotionless about where he lives, and how his neighborhood appears, a reflection of how Joyce himself felt about his Dublin surroundings. (Coulthard 97). Joyce is able to convey this with dull description of the Dublin neighborhoods, using personification of the houses. He doesn’t find any excitement his surrounding, which Joyce makes clear with constantly using negative adjectives in pointing out how the buildings represent this. Joyce writes, “The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (Joyce 829). We are able to build a picture of stillness, almost able to taste the stale air surrounding the houses. Shortly after, we are introduced to Mangan’s sister, one of the few experiences that puts a smile on the boy’s face. He says, “Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side” (Joyce 830). She is his happiness, though none of it can possibly be more than a crush. We know it is nothing more than his hormonal instincts because we learn that he has never even spoken to her, and has no idea what kind of person she is. Later, there is additional proof to how physical his crush really is, “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” (Joyce 831). The boy is physically attracted to her, and does not know how to respond, so naturally, his heart guides him towards admiring her from a distance.

The girl eventually speaks to him for the first time, leaving the boy emotionally clinging to her every word. During their very first conversation, the girl asked him if he was going to Araby, an Indian themed bazaar in Dublin, but he forgets what he answered; more than likely because at the time it wasn’t important to him. It is not until all of his heart is set on going to Araby when she says he should go, making him want to bring her something back from the bazaar. Joyce quickly tells us that the boy not only wants to go, but he cannot wait for it, “What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening days” (Joyce 831). He wants to skip over every day, and arrive at Saturday already. The boy goes from not caring for this bazaar to instantly wanting to go to it, all because of this girl. He begins to shows emotional vulnerability.

The story contains various crucial moments in which the boy shows the reader the type of person he is, but it is not until the end of the story when we finally learn Joyce’s underlying motive. The end of the short story is vital to how it explains the moral the boy learns, and thus, what Joyce tries to tell us. The first moment we read about the boy’s journey to Araby is that he still hates all the things about the community in which he lives. “The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey” (Joyce 832). He notices the horrible view he has on his journey, and quickly remembers why he is going to this bazaar; to experience something new. But does he want something new, or is he going because the girl wanted him to go? It is clear from their conversation that he wants to go to please the girl, but Joyce’s negative descriptions of the city remind us that the bazaar also represents something new to him. Both of these ideas excite the narrator, and encourage him to act on this emotion.

After an “intolerable delay” on the train, he finally arrives at the building which contains the “magical name” of Araby. This name represents something mystical and different, and this is what excites him about going to it. As soon as he finds a way in though, he is quickly hit with the realization that maybe he shouldn’t have gone. He notes, “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” (Joyce 832). This is when we first see the boy’s happiness crash down into sadness. We see him realize that the bazaar is near over, and how he yet again missed something he had desperately waited for. This new experience is something that was not meant for him, or maybe this new experience was poorly planned for and not acted on properly. Either way, it is apparent that Araby was not what the boy expected, and we see this is in how he describes his experience in front of one of the stalls. When a young lady approaches him, he notes “The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall” (Joyce 833). He notes how the stall seemed dark and foreign, and was guarded by something uninviting. He expected a positive experience with much joy, but he quickly saw how it was quite the opposite. Similarly, the boy notes how the lady and two men at the stall were speaking with English accents. Joyce writes this in to tell us that this bazaar, something which should represent multiculturalism, is actually not international at all. The boy came to experience something Middle Eastern, but he only experiences something he sees very often in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland. He makes a point of noticing this, so we can only assume this adds to his disappointment.

He doesn’t want to leave just yet though, because he feels too embarrassed to have even come this whole way; “I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real” (Joyce 832). He clearly is embarrassed to have even come to Araby, and regrets his entire journey, but stays to make it seem like he came with a purpose. This one thought the boy has introduces the idea that maybe he is finally realizing how naïve he was about this trip. Maybe the boy actually sees how immature his reaction to the girl was, and maybe he finally realizes how his heart has taken control over his brain. This is important to Joyce’s message.