Araby-paragraph

March 19^th, 2013

James Joyce - Araby paragraph

Mr. Garrioch / World Lit.

12v1 111150 Ho In Hee

  From a distance, James Joyce’s “Araby” might appear to be a story of a boy’s disillusionment with reality. After all, when the nameless narrator encounters a lady shopkeeper who is more interested in two young men flirting with her, he finds his eyes “burned with anguish and anger”. His fantasy about Araby as “Eastern enchantment” breaks when he actually reaches there, by its dark look and by feigned manners and flirtations of people in the bazaar. Such disappointment brings him a realization of how deluded his ideal has been. However, on the other hand, the narrator’s anger is also rooted himself as well. From the very beginning, the narrator’s love toward Mangan’s sister is depicted as more holy than physical. The narrator portrays his deep crush on her when he says “her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises” or “(I) murmured “O love! O love!” many times”. This contrasts his uninvolvement in the Irish Christian society alluded in phrases like “I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died”. The boy’s epiphany of his self contradiction takes place when he confronts a lady shopkeeper flirting with two young men and fake kindness, when he “sees himself as a creature driven and derided by vanity”. He comes to know his love was not simply platonic, as he depicted, but physical. Therefore, it is perhaps more accurate to assume that “Araby” extends beyond anguish over the outer world. The narrator, indulged in an illusion towards both the world and in himself, realizes the true selfish and affected mind as he goes through emotional crash. In this sense, the narrator’s disillusionment is not simply rooted in frustration towards the society but also in himself.