“Araby” is a coming of age story written by James Joyce, set in Dublin, Ireland, at the beginning of the 20th century. Joyce uses a person vs. society formula as the central conflict of the story in which a naïve boy learns the difference between the fantastical nature of boyish love and the actuality of the real world. It is these two opposing perceptions that lead to the story’s central idea that adolescents acquire maturity through the forfeiture of innocence. Through the use of richly crafted settings, Joyce accentuates the narrator’s fumbling, first foray into adulthood. Setting is more than just where a story takes place. In the exposition, Joyce uses personification in his description of where the narrator is living to set the tone for the entire story. “North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street . . . . The houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” (Joyce 110). There is a duality in Joyce’s use of the word blind. He uses it to illustrate the bleakness of the dead-end area in which the narrator lives, but he also uses blind to show how society is oblivious to the narrator. Joyce’s depiction of the houses being aware tell the reader that the inhabitants of the neighborhood are good people, but they have become complacent as they trudge through their daily existence. Joyce goes on to comment on the state of religion in the area saying, “The former tenant of our house, a priest,