The Love in "Araby" in James Joyce's Dubliners
...ly the unnamed boy in “Araby” has a romantic view of the world. Besides, the story is actually about Orientation, which is derived from the word orient, the east. To orient one means to know the direction in which the sun rises. The main character of “Araby” is disoriented in the beginning, but he knows where he is and where to go in the world at the end of his journey. A form of fiction like this in literature is a typical bildungsroman. According to Francois Jost, the bildungsroman, which is sometimes known as the apprenticeship novel, is closely associated with autobiography. The introduction of autobiographical materials is even one of the characteristics of the male bildungsroman. When Joyce wrote Dubliners, he was in his early twenties. Obviously, much of the first three stories, including “Araby”, is written based on his own personal experience. They are all narrated in the first person, and the narrators seem as sensitive, intelligent, and interested in learning and fantasy as Joyce. Though “Araby” is a story of first love, it is also a portrait of a world that defies the ideal and the dream. Some notable examples are: the description of the street and the house where the boy lives, the relationship between the boy and his aunt and uncle, the recalls of the dead priest and his belongings, his shopping trip with his aunt in Dublin, and his trip by train to the bazaar. Firstly, Joyce uses many metaphors to depict North Richmond Street. The street, being blind, is a dead end. The houses are “imperturbable” in the “quiet,” the “cold,” the “dark muddy lanes” and “dark dripping garden.” In the opening paragraphs of the story, there are a series of adjectives – brown, musty, waste, littered, useless – which cause readers to be overwhelmed with dullness and cheerlessness of the setting, and forces readers to notice the lifelessness and hopelessness that surround the boy. Secondly, the alienation of relationship between the boy and his uncle, that results in the uncle’s coming home too late for the boy to go to the bazaar in time, is due to the lack of empathy spirit or conscious caring. Thirdly, the symbolic description of the dead priest and his belongings, such as the rustic bicycle pump and the old yellow books, while reminding us of a vital past, suggests the spiritual and intellectual stagnation of the present. It is among this atmosphere of spiritual paralysis that the boy initiates his love with blind hopes and romantic dreams. Here, Joyce ironically depicts the boy’s dreams in contrast with the harsh reality of life, which the boy ignores. Fourthly, on his market trip, “Amid the curses of laborers” “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women,” (31) the boy carries his aunt’s parcels, which he imagines he bears a “chalice safely through a throng of foes.” (31) The last portrait is about the train to the bazaar. The boy takes “a deserted train” with “an intolerable delay,” going through “ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.” (34) The hero of the story has a number of romantic ideas about both the girl and the upcoming Araby. His passionate feelings for Mangan’s sister blindfolds him and makes him follow her in the shadows as though she were a “summons to his foolish blood,” (30) his “heart leaped” at the very sight of her on the doorstep. He says “But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.” (31) He imagines the marvels at the bazaar and dreams of buying a beautiful present for her. However, in the evening when he wants to go the bazaar, his frustration rises because his uncle comes home so late that he fears he may not be able to go. He feels like escaping from his household to a new independent world. For the boy, pursuing his romantic love for Mangan’s sister means entering the adult wor...