Symbolism in James Joyce’s “Araby”
...in hero’s life we should start from the very beginning of the story. The story begins with the description of “an uninhabited house at the blind end”. That may describe the condition of the boy’s relation to the reality. He is lonely, without a lot of friends, he doesn’t see the reality, as is he was blind and he lives in his own made-up world. Then the author mentioned “old useless papers” in the waste room. This phrase doesn’t raise any doubts, on the one hand, but on the other may be it shows the boy’s romantic as these papers symbolize the past, and as we know the memory of something that had almost gone always evokes nostalgia. But he is alive and the people around him are not, and we can say so as he always mentions shadows of citizens, the shades of people. He stands alone in the dark: blind end (darkness in eyes), dark muddy lanes, dark dripping gardens, dark rainy evening. The boy always stands in the dark, it means that he can’t decide which way he will follow in his life and the “half-opened door” proves this idea. He is at the cross-roads and he is about to open that door and start his life. But at the end of the story, when the boy says, “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity” we understand that he is totally defeated by the society. He becomes like the other citizens of North Richmond Street. There are also a lot of other symbols in “Araby” of dishonesty and hypocrisy. The main symbols of it are the priest (a very hypocritical character) and “the wild garden”. The priest is the symbol of piety, spirituality and sanctity, as a rule. But in this story the image of the priest connected with “the Memoirs of Vidocq”- a collectio...