Araby Changes

In the short story “Araby”, by James Joyce, we are introduced to a boy who has a crush on a girl he has never even talked to. We see that throughout the story he is infatuated with this girl to the point of doing nearly anything for her. Despite his infatuation for herl, his attitude toward her changes rather dramatically toward the end of the story. From this dramatic plot twist, we learn that falling in love with someone you do not know or that you have never talked to is useless and folly. The boy in the story goes through one major change at the end of the story that is caused by many different variables. In the very last paragraph we see an extremely contrasting state of the boy from the beginning. At the beginning of the story, we see

He only does this so that he can see when the girl leaves her house, so that he can leave at the same time. The boy also goes on to share a somewhat disturbing image when he says “her name sprang to [his] lips in strange prayers and praises.” During these sessions, he confesses to crying with eyes “often full of tears” and “ a flood from [his] heart [that] seemed to pour itself out,” (479). Throughout the story we see many situations just like the ones aforementioned, where he is describing his thoughts and things he does that are encircled by this girl. Toward the end we start to see a shift in his demeanor. On the day of his trip to Araby, we see many negative signs throughout the day. These signs include his uncle being short with him in the morning, his uncle coming home very late that night, the lonely train ride to the bazaar, and finally the bazaar being near closed and empty once he arrived there (480-481). Although,

One thing he learns is that it is not wise to fall in love, or become so infatuated, with a girl that you do not know that you would do anything for her. This is perhaps the most obvious, because the girl asked the boy if he was going to Araby, which led the boy to go by himself and be left alone in the dark (481). If his crush would have never asked him if he was going he would not have been inclined to go. She did though, and because of this, we see all changes that happened with the boy. The second thing he learned was to not over-glorify things, because it usually cannot satisfy the imagination and build-up of it. In the story, the author describes himself becoming obsessed with going to Araby. He says that he couldn’t concentrate on his reading because “her image came between [him] and the page he strove to read.” Even his teachers began to notice that he was slacking off in school and he could not find any patience with the serious work of life (480). When he finally reaches Araby, he is distraught and felt unwelcomed, describing himself looking at items in a lady’s booth so that she would think he was more interested than he actually was even though his stay was “useless.” The words in which the author describes this bazaar that he had been waiting for altered from his excitement and anxiousness from days before. His description paints the picture of a barren wasteland, using