Authors Deception in James Joyce's Araby
... the story and they basically outline how the boy illustrates his neighborhood and his house. Joyce uses indistinct and lightless features in the story to create a dark and gloomy mood and effect and he refers to older literature when the boy stumbles into the waste room which later in the story characterizes how the boy is changing into a man, and also how his infatuation with his friend’s sister is rising. Joyce also implements a sense of dislike for religion in the story through his narrative or boy’s point of view. Writers can enable a sense of what atmosphere the character in the story is feeling through implementing a certain mood or setting in the story. Joyce also creates a certain mood in the story which shows his audience how the boy feels about his surroundings. He first does this when he says, “The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.” This demonstrates how Joyce is showing that even the houses on the street have more personality then their residents. However, this also makes the reader feel that his surroundings are very lifeless and dark. When Joyce starts to describe the inside of the boy’s house he also tries to derive that same effect. We can see this when he says, “Air, musty from having been long enclosed.” He shows how his house is so lifeless and how the air is drenching for light, almost like it being too dry. Joyce also writes, “and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old useless papers,” almost like saying that the atmosphere needs some care and attention, but is reversely having junk and mess everywhere. Joyce forces even the blindest reader to see how lifeless the boy’s surroundings are. In this story, Joyce makes references to other well-known literature to help him tell the reader what is going to happen in the story. The first story he makes reference to is “The Abbot, by Walter Scott.” This novel was about the Queen of Scotts, Mary, and it showed her life through a religious perspective. This novel was mainly centered on religion and sexuality which later in the story, becomes a main point by Joyce. The second story that Joyce talks about was the, “The Devout Communicant,” which was also known to be centered on sexuality. These first two books that Joyce refers to, show later in the story, on how the boy is transforming from a boy to a man. They show how his sexual obsession for his friend’s sister is set to rise. The last title that Joyce brings up in the excerpt is, “The Memoirs of Vidoc.” This story is about a thief who turned into a government agent and made a huge fortune, but he eventually loses it. Joyce uses this story to show the deceptive features that would eventually follow up in the story like how he describes the girl and how he really wanted to bring something back for her from the bazaar. Joyce uses these titles to show that this story would eventually have a romance and also the main character would be going on a quest. Joyce, who was brought up by Catholics, shows in this story how he, in his life, also rejected his Catholic upbringing, just like how the boy sees the Church school. Joyce first shows his dislike for religion when he says, “when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free,” almost as if they were getting set free from some jail or sanitarium and that they were in the jai...