Sybolism In Araby

James Joyce's short story "Araby" is filled with symbolic images of religion, materialism and paralysis. The story opens and closes with a strong sense of symbolism that is continually alluded to throughout the story. As seen in the body, the images are shaped by the narrator's experience of the Church and the stagnation of Dublin. The protagonist 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 disillusioning experiences awakens 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, but toward himself as "a creature driven by vanity" (p33). By analyzing "Araby's" potent use of symbolism and the inherent meanings divulged through this method of discourse, we are able to see how the symbols are actualized to provide the reader with insight and depth into a story, whilst also encapsulating the narrator's experience. It is this experience that drives the narrative's momentum forward to the epiphany.

The story begins with a description of North Richmond Street, an enclosed street within Dublin. "Being blind" (p27) the street represents Dublin's paralysis, the personification of the houses gazing "at one another with brown imperturbable faces" (p27) symbolizing the complacency with which the street has come to accept its stagnation. The elements of the church are described as oppressive with the boys needing to be 'set free' from the quiet Christian Brothers' School. This opening paragraph discloses the ineffectuality of the Church through the portrait painted. This seeming lack of religious adherence is a contextualization of 20th century Ireland. The religious undertones of North Richmond Street are symbolically alluded to in the composition of the houses which mirror the construct of pews and a now un-inhabited altar. The narrator's own home conjures up images of the Garden of Eden with its "central apple tree" (p27); however, religion's presence has long ceased and those who should have tended to it have allowed it to become wild, the central tree standing alone amid "a few straggling bushes" (p27). These bushes suggest that the remnants of religion left in Dublin are but mere stragglers. Stone describes the imagery of the ruined Eden as having to do with "man's downfall and his knowledge of good and evil: fundamental themes aroused through the story of "Araby" (1965, p378). Thus the introductory descriptors with their inherit symbolism convey to the reader the nature of the fable to be told.

The deceased priest's collection of books serves to arm the narrator with language and motivation within the story as well as "objectify the boy's confusion" (Stone, 1965, p379). The Abbott by Walter Scott tells of a hero who idolizes from a distance a "harlot queen" and seeks to free her from her disposition. The Devout Communicant by Friar Pacificus Baker is noted for its verdant pious language and The Memoirs of Vidocq, written by Francois-Jules Vidocq was a story about a thief who uses deception to evade capture. The relevance of these texts, one being of religious and romanticized notions, one of pious language and the other a tale of deception provide a summation of the actions and experiences of the protagonist. It is through the boy's self-deception and human fallibility that his introduction into manhood is fully recognized. When Joyce describes North Richmond street as a dead end it is "a simple statement of fact"; (Roberts, 478) the blindness in which the street has been contextualized serving as a metaphor for the protagonist in his own blindness. Thus the metaphor suggests that the boy too is blind as unconscious of his own self deceit he unravels the lie that is his 'decent life,' and in doing so slowly begins to realize his relation to the paralysis that surrounds him.

When the boy and his companions play in the street the lamps lift their "feeble lanterns" to the sky of "ever-changing violet" (p27). The narrator, aware of the lack of spiritual beauty in Dublin uses a method of transference by attaching symbolic imagery to his surroundings. The imagery dually reflects the street's inability to reach out from beyond its' borders to meet the night sky, this also able to be seen as the inability to reach for heaven, another symbol for the loss of religion. The narrator's use of archaic language, selecting pertinent phrases such as "ran the gauntlet" (p28) to detail the boys play in the "dark muddy lanes behind the houses" (p27) allows him to set the chivalrous tone that is maintained for the duration of the story. The boy and his companions "fight against" in a medieval fashion the "rough tribes" (p28) of the cottages where odors arise from "the ash pits" (p28). These images symbolize the abject poverty of Joyce's Dublin where the lower classes are barely distinguishable from the middle-class, the poverty and lack of religion characterizing the reality the protagonist must face in coming to terms with his own paralysis, this too, barely indistinguishable from the community he belongs to.

Mangan's older sister, the object of the narrator's affections is representative of the boy's sexual confusion and transition into adolescence, this enveloped in sexual desire, naivety and sacred adoration. At the market, the protagonist ironically acknowledges that the environment is the epitome of a place hostile to romance. Although most pertinent, is that even in this hostile environment his imagination is fertile, as he envisions carrying her "image" as a "chalice" through a "throng of foes" (p29). This passage is pivotal in that the boy has begun to idolize Mangan's sister as an embodiment of romance and spirituality. With her name springing to his "lips at moments in strange prayers and praises" (p29) the object of his confusion becomes increasingly apparent. The name 'Mangan' suggests a relation to the poem "Dark Rosaleen" by James Clarence Mangan. The themes of this poem and that of "Ð"raby" run parallel with each other. The strong correlation is of particular relevance in both stories subject matters, the narrator's feelings in each for a girl being a confused mixture of sexual desire and of sacred adoration. Dark Rosaleen has "holy delicate white hands," and her image "floats like light between my toils and me" and is able to cause the hero to "kneel