James Joyce is considered to be one of the most outstanding writers of the Modernist literature which occupies period from the beginning of the XXth century to the end of World War II. Modernist works are known to depict characters who feel themselves lost, in social and spiritual sense. Themes such as government and religion are touched deeply enough. The author reveals all cynicism to those institutions in spite of the fact that all citizens of those time were taught to respect them properly.
Araby is a short story belonging to James Joyce’s collection, Dubliners. This book describes life in Dublin, and in Ireland in general as it was at the beginning of the twentieth century, without any embellishment. The stories of this collection are set in a way to give the opportunity to observe the character development of a child into a grown man. The first three works are supposed to be told by a young boy. The next three depict an adolescent person, etc. Araby completes the first set of stories.
Thus, it is presented from the point of view of a boy standing on the threshold of adolescence. The title of the story is derived from a real festival which appeared in the capital of Ireland in 1894 when the writer was about twelve years old.
The content f the story is interesting enough. An impressionable boy mixes a romantic infatuation with religious delight. He decides to go to Araby bazaar which Oriental theme is exotic enough for Dubliners, to buy something for his beloved. Because of some family circumstances the boy does not come in time. Being captured by a sudden conversation of a female clerk with her male friends he forgets about his aim to come to that place. As a result, he sees Araby is closing down. At this very moment he understands that because of his imagination carried him away, he forgets about much more important things. This understanding finally makes him feel stupid and furious with himself.
Araby, an early story in Dubliners, plays on the sense of the Oriental as a kind of suspended or borrowed time that represents the yearning for escape from the greyness of wintry northern Europe. The story ends up reinforcing the claustrophobic interiority of the Irish colony (Makdici, 259).
In spite of the fact that the author uses a first person narrative technique, Joyce reveals mixed thoughts and wishes of his young main character. This method is the best way to call up in readers a similar reaction to the boy’s one. Some kind of a sudden understanding at the dramatic climax scene of the story is observed by us.
Joyce’s Araby confuses sexual desire with Oriental pleasure. The adolescent narrator of the story is infatuated with Mangan’s sister, who, when she ultimately speaks to him, asks him if he was going to Araby: ‘It would be a splendid bazaar she said; she would love to go. Following this exchange, the lovesickness of the narrator takes the following form, where the desire for Mangan’s sister is metonymically shifted onto Araby (Makdisi, 259).
In his story James Joyce seems to be not only a talented writer but also a music expert. His vast music background knowledge allow him masterly portray the characters of Irish society. Joyce uses music notes in order to convey the tones of symbolism, character traits depiction. His innovative suggestion about observing characters maturity through the plot of several stories like through the course of time presents the unique approach for the real life events portraying. As Norris points out, “Joyce’s Araby not only draws attention to its conspicuous poetic language; it offers the beauty of its art as compensation to the frustration that are thematized in the story” (45).
Telling the story form the narrator point of view gives the possibility to reader to observe everything through their own eyes. Thus, we can not only learn about his thoughts and confused feelings but also know why does it happen in this way by means of the clues given by the author.
The paradox of Araby’s incongruent Romantic appeal poses a problem that Portrait criticism also confronts and resolves a stylistic imitation, parody, or ironic pastiche. But I find it more useful to treat Araby’s peculiar language as a textual performance with several conflicting layers: a self-incriminating narration whose rhetorical aims the text encapsulates and subjects to an immanent critique (Norris, 45).
The evidence to this statement we can find here: “But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires” (Joyce, 251).
For Joyce, women were the surround. Yet Joyce’s women are not mere mythic figures, types, such as appear in the work of so many other male authors. They have a reality of their own which is palpable even though the men who occupy the foreground of the stories largely ignore it (Benstock, 267).
In the Araby we can find confirmation to this statement as well. “I had never spoken to her, except for a few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood” (Joyce, 26). Thus, we can be sure, that for the main character as well as for the author women always associated with divine creatures, whose mission on the earth was not only to give birth to new people.
James Joyce’s short story Araby portrays several various small worlds which include adolescence, maturity, and the description of public and cultural life in Dublin at that time. From the pages we learn how this city has grown to the level able to smash hopes and the expectations of the young boy. The city created the person that we meet in the story as a narrator.
Speaking about the story’s protagonist we can say that he is not the naive boy nut a mature person. This is clearly shown through the plot of the story, remaining the times “when the Christian Brothers’ school set the boys free” (Joyce, 18). In spite of the fact that they were free people, they lived into an “equally grim world, where not even play brought pleasure” (Coulthard, 78). The demonstration of this culture was possible by means of showing a boy’s love to a certain girl.
It should be mentioned that young boy was absolutely bewildered by this girl. Finally, the girl in the beginning of the story was completely replaced by another girl with an “English accent” working as the clerk at the bazaar. This at the first time understandable meaning has a symbolic implication. It depicts the total power and convincingness that England possessed over Ireland and Dublin particularly at that time.
It can seem strange but the antagonist in this story is not a person. The unique culture and the way of life in Dublin is such character. We can explain it as following: it had a great impact on the boy’s point of view and the other people from the city. It played a distinguished role in the boy’s life moulding. Araby can be treated as a story “of a soul-shriveling Irish asceticism, which renders hopes and dreams not only foolish, but sinful” (Coulthard, 81). The symbolism is present in the scene when a boy searching to buy something interesting for his beloved girl, forgets to do this because of temporal infatuation to English-speaking girl. The reader feels the message of the story depicting the Dublin society. It harshly reveals the antagonist of those times as “a repressive Dublin culture is” (Coulthard, 83).
In conclusion to the said above I would like to point out that the story of James Joyce Araby left a long lasting impression on me. Through its allegorical plot, I understood the hard and severe life that people were obliged to deal with in Dublin society many decades ago. I agree with the opinion of Coulthard who said that “The narrator has become embittered rather than wiser, which was his destiny from the first for desiring joy in an environment that forbade it” (89). Araby can fairly be considered as the portrayal of the author’s own life in a background of repressive culture that was in Dublin.
Bibliography
Benstock, Bertnard. James Joyce: The Augmented Ninth: Proceedings of the Ninth International James Joyce Symposium, Frankfurt, 1984. Syracuse University Press, 1988.
Coulthard, A.R.. World Literature in Review. Web.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners. Spark Educational Publishing, 2004.
Makdisi, Saree et al. The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West. Oxford University Press US, 2008.
Norris, Margot. Suspicious Readings of Joyce’s Dubliners. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.