araby symbolism essay

Symbolism in “Araby” Short Story by James Joyce

Symbolism is a rather significant literary device that is widely used by a variety of authors and takes their works on a higher level. A short story “Araby,” written by a great Irish novelist James Joyce and in 1914 published in his Dubliners collection, is filled with different symbols. Some of them represent and reveal the topics of romance and religion, providing a deep interconnection and opposition of these two concepts. In contrast, others have the purpose of illustrating other aspects of the short story, namely, its world and the narrator’s perception of it. That is why understanding and analyzing the symbols in “Araby” is crucial.

First, it is essential to notice that not only objects become symbols in this short story but also characters. For example, when portraying Mangan’s sister, for whom the narrator has deep romantic feelings that are mixed with reverence, respect, and even timidity, Joyce uses symbolism. It allows the author to emphasize an eternal connection between religion and love and a thin line between purity and sinfulness. When describing the girl, the narrator mentions “her figure defined by the light,” “the white curve of her neck,” and “the white border of a petticoat” (Joyce 403, 404). The lightness and ease of Mangan’s sister make her the Virgin Mary symbol. She is an innocent young lady who is not aware of the narrator’s romantic feelings, and her religious purity will not probably allow her to return the boy’s love.

Further, the fact that the narrator never mentions the girl’s name and only refers to her as the sister of his friend is another symbol related to her. At first, it may seem unreasonable since she is an object of the narrator’s intense, passionate, and youthful romantic feelings and plays a great role in his life as the representation of light. It is for her sake that the boy seeks to go to Araby and buy a precious gift. Nevertheless, the absence of her name in the story may mean that she is eventually left in the past as a sweet memory and does not become more significant to the narrator when he grows up.

Another symbol is the death of the former tenant of the narrator’s house – an old priest. According to the narrator, “he had been a very charitable priest,” and his death may symbolize the values that religion preaches, namely generosity, mercy, and love for other people (Joyce 402). Although it is possible to suggest that he was charitable during his lifetime, “in his will he had left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister,” which is his last and probably the greatest manifestation of generosity and love (Joyce 402). Additionally, his death and the fact currently a young boy lives in his house illustrate the inevitability of changes from conservative social and religious views to more liberal and open-minded.

Some of the deceased priest’s belongings also may be considered symbols. First, it is a “rusty bicycle pump” that is hidden under a bush in his garden (Joyce 402). Second, those books that the narrator finds in the former tenant’s room, namely, romance and crime novels, do not seem to fit into the image of the servant of God and the church member. These objects found by the boy allow the readers to doubt the truthfulness and sincerity of the priest’s intentions and faith, as well as the reliability of the Catholic Church itself. Indeed, no one knows what is hidden in the priest’s garden or room, so this symbol directs readers to the question of religion and its truth. Moreover, it also brings up thoughts about the necessity and inevitability of changes in society’s lifestyle and way of thinking and its transition to liberalism.

Furthermore, brown color, which is mentioned more than once in the story, is another symbol in “Araby.” For instance, the narrator describes the houses that “gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces” and Mangan’s sister’s “brown figure” (Joyce 402, 403). This color is used by the author in order to emphasize the boredom, discouragement, and hopelessness of the whole story and the narrator himself. When everything around is brown, there is no chance one may be in a good mood or have high hopes for tomorrow. What is more, the purpose of brown color surrounding the citizens is probably to make sure they continue living their “decent lives” where nothing exciting or interesting may ever happen (Joyce 402). This also explains the narrator’s passionate feelings for the girl – he wanted to have some kind of adventures, feel different, and be able to hide from reality in his imagination, thinking about Mangan’s sister.

To draw a conclusion, one may say that symbols play a significant role in Joyce’s “Araby.” They allow the story’s readers to gain a more in-depth understanding of its aspects and give them an opportunity to review their opinions about various phenomena of everyday life. What is more, the use of symbolism also reveals the author’s and probably the narrator’s points of view regarding religion, romance, the needed changes in society and church, and the surrounding environment. Therefore, even when reading a short story like “Araby,” it is crucial to pay attention to what is inherent in an object, action, or a character’s image and be ready to see and understand more than merely the story’s plot. Searching for and interpreting symbols may help gain a more profound and substantial perception of a literary work and provide a reader with unique thoughts and ideas.

Joyce, James. “Araby.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing , edited by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, Pearson, 2016, pp. 402-406.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › British Literature › Analysis of James Joyce’s Araby

Analysis of James Joyce’s Araby

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 6, 2022

One of James Joyce’s most frequently anthologized works, “Araby” is the third in the trilogy of stories in his 1914 collection, Dubliners , which Joyce described in a letter to the publisher Grant Richards as “stories of my childhood.” Like its predecessors, “The Sisters” and “An Encounter,” “Araby” tells the story of an unfortunate fall from innocence, as a young boy comes to recognize the sorry state of the world in which he lives. On the whole, Joyce’s home city is not kindly portrayed in these stories; he set out in Dubliners to produce what he called “a moral history of my country,” with a particular focus on the supposed “centre of paralysis,” Dublin itself. “Araby” and the other stories of Dublin’s youth are tales of initiation into this gray world.

As is the case with most of the stories in Dubliners, “Araby” takes its inspiration from remembered fragments of the author’s own childhood, including the Joyce family’s sometime residence on Dublin’s North Richmond Street, the Christian Brothers’ School that Joyce and some of his siblings briefly attended, and the “Araby” bazaar that passed through the city in May, 1894, when Joyce would have been 12 years old. Yet although Joyce’s life is deeply woven into his art, neither “Araby” nor any of his other works are merely autobiographical. These remembered elements come together in a story of a young boy in the intense grip of his first love, who imagines himself dispatched on a romantic quest by his beloved, only to realize in the end that his romantic notions were the naive fantasies of a child.

The dismal state of Joyce’s Dublin is suggested in part by the gloomy atmosphere of the story. We are twice reminded in the opening moments that North Richmond Street is “blind.” At its dead end is an empty house, and along one side is a school whose description likens it to a prison. The “brown imperturbable faces” of the other houses suggest a neighborhood of pious moralists keeping each other under constant surveillance. The young boy’s own home is redolent of a past that persists in a stale and unpleasant form: The “air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms.” The house’s former tenant, a priest who passed away there, has left numerous uninspiring reminders of himself, from the rusty bicycle pump in the garden to the “old useless papers” scattered about the place. The narrator hints that the old man was at home among the street’s “brown imperturbable faces” when he tells us that the supposedly charitable old man left all of his money to unspecified “institutions” and only the furniture of his house to his sister.

“Araby” is set in the short days of winter, whose cold and dark further underscore its gloomy atmosphere. Throughout, light contends weakly with an encroaching darkness. The boys’ evening play takes place among houses “grown sombre” and beneath a violet sky toward which “the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns.” As the boy arrives at the nearly empty bazaar in the story’s closing moments, the lights are turned off in the gallery of the hall, leaving him “gazing up into the darkness.” Amid the persistent gloom, however, stands the radiant object of the boy’s devotion, Mangan’s sister, “her figure defined by the light.”

The young boy’s ability to see dazzling light in the midst of overwhelming darkness is a function of the romantic idealism that is gradually stripped from him by his decidedly unromantic world. Even the scattered leavings of the dead priest, which include Sir Walter Scott’s historical romance The Abbot , together with the memoirs of the adventurous criminal-turned-detective, Eug ne Fran ois Vidocq, afford him fuel for his romantic imagination. Until the story reaches its sad conclusion, the boy is able to keep the darkness at bay, running happily through the darkened street with his young friends and transforming the clamor of the market on a Saturday evening into the backdrop for his imagined knight’s quest. There he imagines “that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes”; however, the boy’s adventure-story version of his world is challenged by the songs of the street singers, with their allusions to O’Donovan Rossa and other reminders of “troubles in our native land.” The boy imagines his adventurous life despite the political troubles whose effects are felt and sung all around him. For a while, he imagines himself able to transcend such concerns and inhabit a thrilling realm of heroism and perfect love.

However, in the end his world will not sustain these happy illusions. The name of the Araby bazaar promises an Eastern exoticism entirely absent from the tawdry affair he finally experiences. Having imagined himself a questing knight, the boy encounters in Araby his Chapel Perilous, a defiled temple where “two men were counting money on a salver,” and his heroic selfimage crumbles during his encounter with the young woman at the stall he visits, who clearly regards him as a young nuisance. He witnesses in the flirtatious but shallow exchange between the young woman and the two gentleman a version of love considerably less operatic than the devotion that brought him to Araby, and he comes to see himself as a much smaller being than the gallant hero who undertook a sacred quest for his beloved, regarding himself in the final moment “as a creature driven and derided by vanity.”

In recounting the boy’s journey from passionate innocence to jaded cynicism, Joyce employs a narrative technique that is subtle but effective. The story is told from a first-person retrospective point of view that enables us to perceive two distinct but intimately related voices in the narration: that of the devoted young boy able to imagine himself a knight-errant “in places the most hostile to romance” and that of the subdued older man, recalling his younger self with an ironic detachment born of disappointment. The narration brings us inside the mind of the youthful lover, perplexed and overwhelmed by emotions that he can interpret only in the languages he knows: that of religious devotion and the stories of adventure and romance. Throughout, though, we are reminded that the young boy’s “confused adoration” is being recalled by his older and sadly unconfused self. The gloomy opening description of North Richmond Street, with its houses “conscious of decent lives within them,” gazing at each other “with brown imperturbable faces,” clearly reflects the perspective of the older man rather than that of the boy who careened through the same street in play. And the explicit judgment in the narrator’s recollection that “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood ” (emphasis mine) reflects an ironic self-perception that the young boy does not at that moment have. These two voices eventually converge in “Araby” ’s closing paragraph, when the narrator declares, “I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity,” revealing the origin of that ironic perspective in the moment of his sad fall from romance to cynicism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. 1959. Revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Joyce, James. Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Edited by Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz. New York: Penguin USA, 1996.

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Analysis of Visual Imagery and Sense Perception in Joyce’s “Araby” Essay

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In James Joyce’s “Araby,” the powerful visual imagery guides the narrator’s journey and offers insight into his decisions. Joyce’s short story, written in the style of Realism and set in Dublin, Ireland, is rife with antique imagery and mystical religious symbolism. The narrator, a young boy, is captivated by his love interest, Mangan’s sister, and is driven to visit the bazaar Araby. He is surrounded by visual imagery that serves as a microcosm of his inner world, shaped by his fragile opinions of others. This impression is evident when the narrator is watching Mangan’s sister on the doorstep and describes how her “dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side” (Joyce 285). This imagery is symbolic of his own feelings of love and desire. The described emotions grow stronger as he continues his journey to Araby. Through this visual analysis, Joyce presents a unique view of the narrator’s definition of love and isolation, illustrating how his sense of perception heavily influences his decisions.

Furthermore, in “Araby,” Joyce emphasizes the importance of sensory perception in the narrator’s journey and decision-making. The narrator’s identity is shaped by his emotions and his perceptions of his surroundings. Joyce portrays a clear contrast between isolation and loves through the vivid imagery of colors, sights, sounds, textures, and smells. For example, when the narrator enters the back drawing room of the house, the “air, musty from having been long enclosed” gives the reader a sense of the enclosed, dark space of the room (Joyce 284). Moreover, the “fine incessant needles of water” that the narrator hears through the broken pane symbolizes the loneliness and despair he feels while in the room (Joyce 285). This imagery, along with the narrator’s emotions, leads him to his epiphany of love and longing. Through this imagery, Joyce shows that the narrator’s decision-making is guided by his senses and his emotional state rather than rational thought. The narrator’s journey of love and isolation culminates in his realization that love is not what he expected it to be and that he is still in a state of isolation.

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Introduction

Araby is a short story written by Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic , James Joyce , between 1905 to 1907. Later on, it was published in his collection of short stories known as Dubliners in 1914.

This story revolves around a boy and recounts his disillusionment. The boy develops a big crush on his friend’s older sister. In order to get her attention, he seeks gifts for her in Araby market. However, in doing so, something brings an understanding of his epiphany.

Araby illustrates the tensions and issues of Ireland under British colonialism. It highlights political and social tumult rising as a result of the desire for freedom from British rule. Joyce also criticizes Catholic Churches. He pinpoints the flaws of Churches as well for not appropriately fulfilling its roles.

Araby Summary

The story takes place in the late 19 th century in Dublin, on North Richmond Street. The unknown narrator lives in North Richmond Street. The street has a number of houses where religion seems to dominate the lives of the people. The narrator talks about the dead priest. The priest had some non-religious books which show that they were bothered by the religious restrictions.

Moreover, the street has a dead end and several houses along with a Christian Brother’s school, a Catholic school for boys are situated in this street. The street remains quiet, except when the schoolboys play in the street until dinner.

Further, the boys discussed in the story are all children but they are at the threshold of adulthood. They take interest in the world of adults around them. They watch the narrator’s uncle when he comes home from work, and they follow Mangan’s older sister. They are more inclined towards the opposite sex because they are eager to know more.

The sister of Mangan comes out regularly to call Mangan when it gets dark. Mangan who is a friend of the narrator usually teases her sister while the narrator keeps staring at her. The narrator begins to notice her physical characteristics. Every morning, he waits for her to leave so that he can walk behind her on the way to school.

One day, the girl finally speaks to the narrator. She asks him if he is going to Araby- an upcoming bazaar with Arabic themes.  She is unable to go; she has to attend a religious ritual on the weekend. So, the narrator promises that if he goes to the bazaar, he will find some gift for her.

The narrator gets permission from his uncle to attend the bazaar. The day finally arrives, and the boy reminds his uncle that he wishes to go to the bazaar the same night. His uncle promises him that he will come on time to give him money so that he can go to the bazaar.

However, the uncle of the narrator gets late that night. Due to which the boy gets disappointed. Finally, his uncle arrived drunk and late and tried to stop the narrator from going to the bazaar. For this, his uncle hesitates to give him coins. But ultimately he gives him some coins as his wife convinces him. The boy takes the money and heads off to the bazaar.

He arrives at the Araby market which is nearly closed, and the narrator’s idealized notions of the bazaar are abated. Most of the stalls are closed, and when he stops at the only shop opened. The girl at the shop is busy serving two young men in a flirtatious way. However, she doesn’t pay any particular attention to the narrator. 

This encounter destroys his vision of the Araby bazaar and his idealized vision of Mangan’s sister. He rethinks his romanticized ideas of love, and with shame and anger, he is left alone in the bazaar.

Readers may find both Mangan’s sister and Araby market as an escape from the dull and ordinary life of Ireland in which the narrator is living. The narrator at first describes his mundane life. Then, Mangan’s sister becomes a mental escape for the narrator. 

He thinks of her every time even at places which are hostile for romance. Her thoughts take him away from his routine life. At some points, he could be seen daydreaming about that girl. Mangan’s sister soothes his mind when he is devastated by his mundane life.

Similarly, the narrator thinks of something foreign of Araby market. However, he found out that nothing in Araby market matches the description he made in his mind. He observes people speaking English. He noticed things there are not so foreign but all are just a thin veneer of exotics. In the end, he realizes that all his fantasies were just mistaken belief.

Religion and Catholicism

Throughout the story, one can see how the narrator is surrounded by catholic figures. He also attends a Catholic school. Catholicism plays a vital role in his upbringing. Moreover, he thinks of Mangan’s sister in religious terms and imagery. He is all linked with the Catholic religion. But all these points contradicted on the ground when he started idolizing Mangan’s sister. 

He explains her in religious terms. Given that, he thinks his studies are useless after falling in love with the girl. Explaining in light of this, it raises questions on the relationship of the narrator with religion.

Narrator’s infatuation and distraction as a result of his crush on Mangan’s sister suggest his weak faith. Joyce seems to criticize Catholicism and religion in the story. Also, the priest who was once a tenant at the narrator’s house provides the glimpses of weak faith or fake Catholicism. His belongings suggest his moral weakness, how he was inclined to read the works of crimes and romance which is not suitable for the priest.

However, the narrator’s journey towards self-realization suggests his return to religion. He admits his mistakes and felt guilty for his mistaken beliefs.

Coming of Age

The story is told through an adult perspective. One may find the language used to explain the youthful experiences of a grown man. It is elaborated from the protagonist’s behaviour towards his friends and family. He no longer enjoys playing outside and doesn’t laugh on lame jokes of his uncle. Rather, he builds up a defiant personality towards them.

Also, he develops a crush on a friend’s sister and starts praising her physical appearance. This tells about the budding sexuality of the narrator. Moreover, his desire to escape from his boredom and dull life also suggests his mature behavior. Though, the aforementioned things are the starting point towards his adulthood. His full-grown maturity is represented in the Araby market. 

There he realizes his mistaken beliefs. He gains knowledge about his naïveté that how he was trying to impress his crush through gifts. Also, how naively he developed a fanciful idea about the Araby market which in reality is in contrast.

Love and Sexuality

The narrator developing a crush on his friend’s sister thought of it as love. He started to think about her and praises his physical appearance though in religious terms yet it highlights his budding sexuality. He seems perturbed regarding the concept of love. At the end of the story, he realized that whatever he was thinking was wrong.

Characters Analysis

The narrator.

He is the protagonist of the story, a young imaginative boy. He lives with his uncle and aunt. He goes to a Catholic school and one may see how he is surrounded by catholic Irish world. He is in the habit of seeing and judging the world in religious terms and imagery.

Moreover, in the story, he falls in love with the older sister of his friend, Mangan. By falling in love with that girl, he lost all his interest, one being a child should have such as playing with friends and doing homework.

The narrator is so obsessed with religious imagery and terms that he sees his love in those terms. He is of the opinion that his love is like a prayer. At the same time, he also thinks of her as an escape from the oppression of the Irish world.

In order to gain her attention, he wants to buy a gift for her. For this, he goes to the bazaar and there he realizes his illusion of love. Also, he experiences the epiphany of his romantic ideas, his false concepts of the religious sense in terms of love and budding sexuality. 

At that time, all his delusions turn into disappointments. Hence, readers may assume it is his journey of self-realization.

The Narrator’s Uncle

He is the domineering figure in the life of the narrator. Also, he seems to provoke fear in the narrator and his friends when he returns from work to home. Moreover, readers may find him the man with bad manners i-e, drinking problems. He also owes money to a pawnbroker’s wife, Mrs Mercer.

Likewise, he doesn’t behave properly with the narrator. Speaking of which he let the narrator down by coming home late and drunk at the night on which the narrator was supposed to buy a gift for his love. Similarly, he also tries not to give money to the narrator but eventually, he gives him relentlessly.

The Narrator’s Aunt

She seems like a motherly figure to the narrator. She cares about the narrator and expresses her concern when he is going to Araby market late at night. She suggests to him that going that late isn’t a good idea. She uses religious terms while speaking in the story. However, in the end, she persuades the narrator’s uncle to allow him to visit the bazaar. This depicts her sympathetic nature before readers.

Mangan’s Sister

She is the older sister of the narrator’s friend, Mangan, with whom the narrator seems to fall in love. She shows up routinely to call her brother for tea when he is playing outside with friends. In the story, it is shown how she is interested in the Araby market. Due to her interest, the narrator seems like a gift for her in Araby market. However, no glimpses of love or interest are shown from the girl’s side for the narrator.

He is the former tenant of the narrator’s house. He made his last breaths in the drawing-room of that house. Readers may find this character from his belongings that is mentioned by the narrator, which are still present at the house. 

His belongings include The Abbot (a romance novel by Sir Walter Scott), The Devout Communicant (a work of Catholic devotional literature), and The Memoirs of Vidocq (a detective’s memoir) in which the narrator takes particular interests.

Moreover, these books also exhibit the priest’s life that he is indulged after church in works which are non-religious. These books indicate his taste of reading which includes crimes and romance novels. This raises questions on the moral codes of the Catholic Church.

In his belongings, there is also something else included. The narrator states that it is a bicycle pump which is kept hidden. This throws light on the secret outside the life of priests.

Mrs. Mercer

She is the widow of a pawnbroker to whom the narrator’s uncle owes some money. For this, she waits for him to demand his money back on the night of Araby market. She seems to be a collector of postage stamps in order to sell it further to other collectors. In this way, she earns money for a religious cause.

Young Female Shopkeeper

She is a flirtatious character. Two men approached her stall, and the narrator noticed her act of flirting with those men. Also, he noticed her English accent and of the men she is talking to. The English accent of them contradicts the narrator’s fantasies which he was having about Araby market.

Moreover, she doesn’t pay heed to the narrator and talks to him in an absurd manner, which discourages the narrator from buying anything.  Further, her flirtation brings realization in the narrator about the silliness of the attempt to impress Mangan’s sister with a gift.

Literary Analysis

This story is written between 1905 and 1907 and it recounts tensions of Ireland under British control. At that time, Ireland was the colony of Britain and Irish people resented that. Consequently, a movement called nationalism was raised.

Joyce has tactfully highlighted those tensions and issues. In the story, it is evident how Joyce has portrayed Ireland as dull and troublesome. Also, the narrator of the story wants to flee from his real-world into his ideal world. 

Joyce has inserted the element of escapism so the readers may understand the perturbed situations of Ireland. The desire of the narrator’s escapism mirrors the political and social upheaval from which Joyce himself wants to flee.

Similarly, the images Joyce has drawn provide evidence of the tensions of those times. He has set the story in winter. It not just literally depicts the coldness but also highlights the degradation of society as an upheaval in the country. Moreover, the usage of dark imagery also supports the aforementioned issues.

Likewise, Joyce criticized the religious institution and the youth of his country. He rebukes the role of religious institutions they were performing. For instance, the figure of the priest in the story recounts the hypocrisy of religious institutions. The priest who is supposed to be abiding by rules was actually deviant or nonconformist . His inclination towards romance and criminal novels recounts the clandestine life he was living after church hours.

Similarly, the narrator also seems to follow religion in every aspect. However, he also mirrors his weak faith when he is inclined to sexual desires. This throws light on the moral degradation of society.

As well as, Joyce draws readers’ attention towards political tumult of those times. He alludes to certain terms like Donovan O’Rossa. This highlights the nationalist movement which brings civil war in the country in order to get rid of British colonialism. Also, the chanting of songs “ come-all-you” mentioned in “Araby” express the spread of nationalist movement which back then was spread through songs at streets and pubs.

Moreover, people’s taste for materialistic gains is also shown. The narrator thinks buying a gift would be a better way of impressing Mangan’s sister. Also, Mangan’s sister desires for material objects from Araby market.

The story also recounts the narrator’s epiphany. At first, the narrator got astray from the path. He started walking on the road of materialism, sexual desires and delusions. He even thinks that his studies are of no use. He seems to fantasize about Mangan’s sister every time. 

However, in the end, all his beliefs proved wrong and Araby market brought the understanding of epiphany to the narrator. He once again seems to behold the support of religion which he has lost once.

Also, one can see the journey from naïveté towards maturity. Firstly, the narrator’s get stuck in the web of his mistaken beliefs. He thinks whatever his thoughts are they are true and pure. Those thoughts strike him as an escape from the real filthy world to the ideal world not only physically but mentally. Mangan’s sister provides him mental escape and the thoughts regarding Araby bazaar also provide him with an escape.

However, whatever he thought about Araby bazaar proved wrong. He thought it a place surrounded by Oriental things and people. However, he saw people speaking English there. He witnessed a flirtatious woman which also contradicts his ideals of romance. At that time, he seems to realize all his mistakes and that time mature thoughts probed into his mind. He admits his vain motives of impressing Mangan’s sister.

Significance of the Title

Joyce used this title to highlight the exoticism and ideals of romance in the story. It provides the glimpses of escapism. Similarly, it depicts the narrator’s longings of his life. However, Joyce also contradicts his title at the end of the story. The very Araby bazaar to which the narrator desperately wanted to visit, contradicts his mistaken beliefs. Also, it brings the understanding of his epiphany.

The time period of the short story is set in the 19 th century. However, the location of the story is set in Dublin, Ireland. The narrator lives in North Richmond Street where he frequently plays with his friends.

Joyce has inserted the following symbols in the text:

The color brown is used multiple times in the story. The brown color emphasizes the dullness of Dublin. The narrator describes those things brown which appear to him dull. By using this symbol Joyce portrays house as brown, even Mangan’s sister as a “brown-clad figure ” to represent the dull ordinary life.

It depicts how Dublin strikes irksome and uninteresting to the narrator both physically and mentally.

The word blind is used repeatedly in the text. It symbolizes the narrator’s naïveté and isolation. The narrator’s house is situated at the blind end which suggests its lonesomeness from the other houses. Also, it foreshadows the narrator’s isolation from his friends and routinely life.

Moreover, the narrator is figuratively blinded by the infatuation of Mangan’s sister. This makes him a secluded person. Similarly, he gets blinded to the true concept of love and his mistaken beliefs.

Joyce has used a great deal of light and darkness in the story. At first, darkness reveals the narrator’s dull life. The way he plays with his friends in a little lighted area. Also, the short days of winter depict the lack of enthusiasm in his life. Hence, darkness depicts his perturbed life and mentality.

However, in the end, the very darkness becomes the understanding of the narrator’s epiphany. When lights turned off at the Araby market the narrator started to stare at the darkness. At that time, he realized delusions and vain motives of impressing Mangan’s sister.

Joyce draws a vivid picture of the location of the narrator’s abandoned house. He shows how detached it was from the row of other houses. The narrator says “An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from its neighbours in a square ground”. This represents the loneliness of the narrator as well.

Moreover, the narrator has religious imagery to draw the picture of Mangan’s sister before readers. The narrator imagines her every time no matter where he is. In the middle of the market and hustle and bustle, he conjures up her image. In his thoughts, Mangan’s sister strikes him as a spiritual image. 

At the same time, he also imagines himself as a knight protecting his pure love from enemies. The narrator says “I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes”.

Similarly, he drew a coarse picture of Dublin when he was visiting the market with his aunt. He depicts it full of hustle and bustle. However, the people and things present over there were agitating. Due to undisciplined people, he collides with the people. The narrator emphasizes ill-mannered people and the dirtiness of Dublin. He says “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks”

Literary devices

Joyce has used the following literary devices in the text:

Metaphor, Personification and Simile

Joyce uses humanly attributes to describe the view of other houses. The narrator observes that houses are “conscious” of the people living in it. Also, he notices they “ gaze ” at each other.

Moreover, the narrator uses the metaphor of “imperturbable faces” to describe the unchanging and static position of houses.

Similarly, the narrator seems to be using similes in order to convey his emotions as he talked to his crush. He feels his body “ like a harp ” and her words strike him “like fingers running upon the wires”.

The narrator has used exaggerated language to emphasize his excitement. This literary device is evident when he travels by train to Araby market.

When he gets on the train everything seems moving at snail’s pace to him due to his impatience. The narrator says “ After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly “. Further, he uses the word “ crept ” for the train’s speed in order to show how slowly it was moving.

Mostly, Joyce has used religious allusions in the text. At first, the narrator alluded to three books “The Abbot by Walter Scott”, “The Devout Communicant” , and “ The Memoirs of Vidocq “.

Moreover, one can find religious allusions in the description of Mangan’s sister. The narrator portrays her as a “chalice”. It is an allusion to the cup used in the Christian act of communion, and by extension to the Holy Grail used by Jesus Christ. Further, the narrator alluded to the search of Holy Grail by connecting “ chalice” with “throngs of foes “. This suggests how the narrator imagines his crush as a Holy figure before him.

In the same manner, the narrator also alluded to the biblical book of Genesis when he depicts his house with a Garden . He says that his house was previously occupied by a former priest and that time it contains a garden with an apple tree. This very example alluded to Adam and Eve who live in the Garden of Eden. They were sent to the Earth as a result of eating a forbidden fruit commonly known as an apple. By eating so, they also lost their innocence.

Furthermore, the narrator talks about O’Donovan Rossa . This provides the allusion to Irish Fenian leader and prominent figure of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. This provides the glimpses of nationalism and political tumult.

Foreshadowing

Joyce portrays the narrator’s house as the abandoned one from the row of other houses. With the help of this Joyce foreshadows the narrator’s seclusion in the text.

As well as, Joyce alluded to the Adam and Eve loss of innocence. By doing so, he foreshadows the narrator’s loss of innocence and budding sexuality.

At first, the narrator describes the settings and characters in a depressed and gloomy tone. Later on, the narrator seems to use a cheerful and hopeful tone. However, in the end, the tone changes into morose and sombre revealing the narrator’s epiphany.

Araby is a short story written in the realism genre.

Point of view

This story is told with a first-person narrative point of view.

More From James Joyce

• A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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The narrator of “Araby” is surrounded by religion. He attends a Roman Catholic school and all of the people around him, just like he himself, are steeped in the Catholic religion that held sway in Ireland at the time when the story was set. Joyce does not clearly indicate how strongly the narrator believes in his faith, but Catholicism plays a large role in his upbringing and he often explains things through Catholic ideas and imagery.

Most obviously, the narrator over and over again thinks about and describes his crush, Mangan’s sister , in religious terms. At one point he compares her to a “chalice” that he is protecting from a “throng of foes,” a reference that seems to compare her to the Holy Grail. At other times, he literally seems to worship her: “Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.” That the narrator doesn’t even understand his prayers to Mangan’s sister seems to imply that he is not idolizing Mangan’s sister on purpose. Instead, it seems as if his Catholic upbringing has defined the form of how he understands anything for which he feels strong emotion. Up until this point, being a child, the narrator has only ever experienced familial love and love for God (or at least an attempt to love God, one founded in the religious language he is surrounded by), which he does not know how to differentiate from romantic love. And so he thinks of romantic love in religious terms.

At the same time, the sort of idolizing of Mangan’s sister that the narrator engages in would have been seen as deeply irreligious by serious Catholics. The idolization of anything or anyone above God was considered a kind of blasphemy. When looked at in this light, it might be argued that the story exposes or at least questions the narrator’s relationship with religion. The protagonist’s infatuation with and distraction by Mangan’s sister might suggest that he is not strongly devoted to his faith. After all, while thinking of her he begins to see his studies as childish, suggesting that he is not fully invested in his religious education. However the protagonist’s regret at the end of the story could suggest a return to his religious roots. The narrator’s realization that he is a “creature driven … by vanity” is stated in religious terms, and indicates that out of individualist desire (love or infatuation) he has strayed from his true duty. The choice of the word “creature” could have religious connotations as well, in the sense of the creations of God being described as his “creatures.”

At the same time, it is also possible to interpret the text as criticizing Catholicism and religion, as implying that the narrator’s religious background may have set him up to be unsatisfied, because nothing can meet divine standards. Or, conversely, that, just as the narrator’s “worship” of Mangan’s sister is shown to be impossible because nothing can match his imaginative ideals, the story is implying that the same applies to religion in general – that worshipping anything is unreasonable and bound to end in disappointment. More broadly, the story seems to indicate that whatever the particular nature of the narrator’s epiphany, he has come to recognize that what he thought was simple – including his Catholic religion – is in fact complicated and difficult to live with, promising not just salvation but also guilt and anguish.

Religion and Catholicism ThemeTracker

Religion and Catholicism Quotes in Araby

These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand.

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Best Literature Essay Examples

Symbolism of darkness and light in james joyce’s “araby”.

1000 words | 4 page(s)

James Joyce’s short story “Araby” (1914) is a Modernist work that details a young boy’s transition from adolescent romanticism to a more fully-realized and, ultimately, disillusioned maturity. “Araby’s” main narrative revolves around the adolescent protagonist and his quest to impress the sister of one of his friends, Mangan. To do this, he must bring the girl back something from a local bazaar happening in Dublin—a bazaar called Araby. The boy’s idealized notions parallel the bazaar’s exotic romanticism, and Joyce creates a dynamic in which the boy’s journey to the bazaar becomes a kind of hero’s journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell in his book, The Hero with the Thousand Faces.

Detailing the process of the Hero’s Journey, Campbell identifies several different elements, i.e., the call to adventure, test, threshold struggle, flight, elixir, etc. (Campbell 210). On the surface, Joyce’s “Araby” does seem to conform to this structure. However, as the story reaches its conclusion, and the boy does not return with the elixir (i.e., the gift for his friend’s sister), we see that the hero’s journey is unsuccessful. What are we to make of this departure from classic form? Clearly, Joyce wants the reader to feel something other than triumph at the end. Furthermore, Joyce’s explicit use of color—especially light and dark—can point us toward the symbolic meaning in his departure from the classic hero’s journey. The interplay between darkness and light in “Araby” create meaningful contrast that brings out the story’s true thematic intent, where light symbolizes romantic idealism, while darkness typifies the transition to a more hardened sense of maturity and self-awareness.

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The call to adventure, as described by Campbell, “marks what has been termed the ‘awakening of the self’” (42). For the protagonist in “Araby,” this “awakening” is initiated by his infatuation with his love interest, Mangan’s sister. She effectively sets the boy on his journey, and what better place to consummate his initiative with Mangan’s sister than to bring her back something from the exotic bazaar? To show the symbolic importance of the boy’s call to adventure, Joyce uses images of light. As the boy spies Mangan’s sister on the stairs, she is bathed in shades of light that contrast the darkness of their surroundings: “The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing” (2). Joyce repeats the terms “light,” “white,” and “lit” here for effect, contrasting with the dark dreariness of the environment—“It was a dark rainy evening” (2). As a result, Mangan’s sister takes on a mystical, almost otherworldly appearance, appearing like an angel from the darkness. The fact that she is elevated on the staircase as she appears to the boy amplifies this symbolism.

We also see examples of Joyce’s light/dark contrast at the story’s end, where the boy reaches the fabled bazaar and finds it does not meet his romantic expectations. This section of the narrative most closely parallels Campbell’s final “threshold struggle” of the hero’s journey, where the hero must pass a kind of trial in order to reach the “elixir.” Here, the threshold struggle in “Araby” is represented by the protagonist’s uncle, who returns late from work with the money the boy needs to take to the bazaar and, thus, threatens the entire venture. However, the uncle arrives just in time, and the boy is able to make it to the bazaar, albeit late in the evening (here we see darkness recur). At the end, Joyce departs from the traditional hero’s journey. In the bazaar itself, the boy should find romantic light in the darkness, as evinced before with the image of Mangan’s sister. However, at the bazaar, the boy finds only gloomy emptiness: “Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness” (4).

The reader begins to understand that the journey will not end as expected, with the hero’s triumphant return with the elixir to win the favor of the girl. It is far too late for the boy to participate in the magic of the bazaar (if there were any at all), and he does not have the money to buy anything he might be able to bring back. Instead, Joyce mirrors the darkness of the bazaar with that found in the boy’s dawning realization in the story’s final line: “Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity” (5). The recurring images of darkness dominate the story at the end, drowning out the romantic visions of light found in the beginning.

The evocative image of the “adored female” recurs throughout Joyce’s works (Stone 355). In “Araby,” Joyce uses Mangan’s sister as a romanticized image of light appearing from the darkness. However, the fact that the boy is unable to fulfill his journey and bring back Campbell’s “elixir” points to the notion that Joyce intentionally seeks to depart from the typical hero’s journey. Instead of adhering to romanticized motifs, Joyce draws in line with the Modernist conventions prevalent in literature of the early 20th century. The protagonist’s failure, symbolized by the “darkness” he sees within himself at the end is emblematic of a more realistic transition to adulthood than the kind of idealized journey put forth by Campbell. The protagonist fails to consummate the journey, but he does reach a higher plane of both self-awareness and worldly knowledge, both of which mark the transition from naïve innocence to more a more hardened cognizance of the realities of adulthood.

• Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed. Novato: New World Library, 2008.
• Joyce, James. “Araby,” 1914. Retrieved from http://www.plato-philosophy.org
• Stone, Harry. “Araby” and the Writings of James Joyce.” The Antioch Review, Spring 2013: 348-80. ProQuest. 16 Feb. 2017.

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