Araby, By James Joyce

Expectations

James Joyce was an author who did not appreciate where he was born. Instead of basing his stories off things that he did like, he wrote almost all of them about his home town, Dublin, Ireland. In “Araby,” by James Joyce, the young narrator finds a girl that ‘lights up’ his dark, lonely life, but after all of the fantasizing about her, he realizes that she is not what he really wanted all along.

Mangan’s sister is presented as the narrator’s only light in his dreary life. James Joyce explains how the sister symbolizes light when he writes, “She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door,” showing how although the door is not fully open, the narrator is able to notice the light (Joyce). The narrator

The young boy’s life is dreary, isolated, and lonely. Joyce describes the street that the narrator lives on as “being blind” suggesting that it is a dead end road (Joyce). This explains how his life is lonely and there is no hope for a bright future for him because he is stuck at a dead end. The poor town that the narrator lives in reflects the darkness in the character’s life: “The career of our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses” (Joyce). With the children playing in the “dark muddy lanes,” it implies that they are poor and it is a depressing place to be (Joyce). In the short story, “Araby,” the narrator states, “The high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing” (Joyce). This information from the story implies that although the narrator’s environment is very gloomy, he still has a positive attitude and is cheery. The young boy spends a great amount of time in the back room where the priest died, suggesting that he is in a depressing atmosphere making his life dark and dreary. His dark life has isolated him in the house where he lives with his aunt and uncle: “For the boy of “Araby” shades of the prison-house are already closing. Living on a blind street in a ‘musty’ house formerly tenanted by a dead priest, reading dull books inherited from him, wandering amidst the commercialism of the markets,” suggesting that the young boy lives a

In the end of the story, the young boy finds out that Mangan’s sister is just like the bazaar. The narrator has great expectations of both the bazaar and the girl, but he is disappointed once he gets there just as he is with the girl. All along, Mangan’s sister is the narrator’s escape similarly to the bazaar being a way for the young boy to get out the depressing environment. Once the boy gets to the bazaar he finds that it is nothing like he had expected; it is dark and there is nothing really there. The narrator explains that “nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness,” implying that the boy is losing hope in the bazaar being as great as he had imagined (Joyce). The narrator’s dreams are crushed when “An overheard fragment of flirtatious conversation, combined with the British accents of the speakers, works to shatter the boy’s lofty ideas about romantic love, and with their destruction Mangan’s sister loses her elevated place in his imagination,” suggesting that after all of the young boy’s excessive fantasizing about the girl, he realizes she is not what he had hoped (Conboy 408). The narrator shows how he is losing interest in the bazaar when he says, “I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares seem the more real,” suggesting that he really does not want to be there any longer (Joyce). Finally, at