James Joyces “araby”James Joyce’s “Araby”In James Joyce’s short story “Araby,” several different micro-cosms areevident. The story demonstrates adolescence, maturity, and public life in Dublinat that time. As the reader, you learn how this city has grown to destroy thisyoung boy’s life and hopes, and create the person that he is as a narrator. In “Araby,” the “mature narrator and not the naive boy is the story’sprotagonist. “(Coulthard) Throughout the story this is easily shown, especiallywhen it refers to “the hour when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boysfree. “(Joyce 2112) Although they were freed, they were placed into an “equallygrim world, where not even play brought pleasure.
“(Coulthard) Joyce demonstratesthis culture by showing a boy’s love for a girl throughout the story. This youngboy, is completely mystified by this girl, but at the end, the girl is replacedby the girl with an “English accent” attending the booth at the bazaar. Thisshows the power and persuasiveness that England has at that time over Dublin. The antagonist in this story, which can easily be determined is theculture and life in Dublin.
This has a great effect on the boy and the rest ofthe people from this city. Dublin is referred to as the “center ofparalyses,”(Internet) and “indeed sterile. “(Joyce) This plays a huge role in theforming of this boy’s life, where there is no fun. “Araby” is a story “of asoul-shriveling Irish asceticism, which renders hopes and dreams not onlyfoolish, but sinful.
“(Coulthard) In the story, the only thing that the young boyhas to look forward to is buying something for the girl he loves, and in the endhe can’t even do that; and by making the final characters English, the storyleaves an impact on the reader about the Dublin society. It shows the antagonistof the story to be “a repressive Dublin culture. “(Coulthard)Through this allegorical piece, the reader can understand the harsh lifethat people are forced to deal with in Dublin society. “The narrator has becomeembittered rather than wiser, which was his destiny from the first for desiringjoy in an environment that forbade it. “(Coulthard) “Araby” seems to bereflection on Joyce’s own life in a repressive Dublin culture.
Works CitedCoulthard, A. R. . World Literature in Review. (Internet)http://www.
elibrary. com/id/2525/getdoc. cg. . . 2D000;form=RL;pubname=explicator;puburl=0(No Author).
Exhibition and inhibition. (Internet) http://www. elibrary. com/id/2525/getdoc.
cg. . . ame=twentieth_century_literature;puburl=0Joyce, James. Works of James Joyce. (Internet) http://www.
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. 13;form=rl;pubname=monarch_notes;puburl=0Joyce, James. “Araby. ” The Harper Collins World Reader. Ed. Mary Ann Caws and Christopher Prendergast.
NewYork: Harper Collins, 1994. 2112-2116.
