Short Fiction Response

"Araby" by James Joyce - Formalism

The short story chronicles how a young boy comes to self-understanding--through an ironic piercing of the veil of his own impressions. The boy is initially at odds with his surroundings because he perceives his ideas to be of greater importance or maturity than the morals he is exposed to, until he acts on his dreams and realizes how immature he has been.

From the outset, the setting is tacitly understood to be hostile to youthfulness, imagination and romance; North Richmond Street described as "blind"--a dead end--and then it is asserted that the logical result of this is that, "being blind, [it is] a quiet street". This is understood to be an obvious, necessary conclusion; that fact strongly establishes the tired, resigned feelings that affect all of the characters and the narrative itself. The paragraph discussing the priest outlines his "charitable" and involved traits and his diverse interests, from his books to his apple tree to his bicycle pump; however, the priest is dead, his books are yellowed and his bicycle pump rusty. The interests and values he represents are no longer present, but the boy is understood to admire them, because he spends his time looking at the priest's things.

Mangan's sister is the exception to the calm, jaded atmosphere, in the narrator's view; she is described dynamically, with active verbs: "Her dress swung as she moved her body and the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side" (my emphasis). This contrasts with the indefinite adjectives in "the lamps of the street [lift] their feeble lanterns", or the "dark muddy lanes" and the "dark dripping gardens" and the "dark odorous stables". To the boy, this raises her above all others, to religious heights; while carrying parcels for his aunt, he "imagine[s] that [he bears his] chalice safely through a throng of foes"--the foes being all the people he encounters in the street. While others are foes, Mangan's sister's name "[springs] to [his] lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which [he does] not understand".

When at last the the girl speaks, it is only natural that the boy should take concrete action regarding his fanatical devotion to her, and he promises to "'bring [her] something'" from Araby. Suddenly, thoughts that were once passing fancies about the girl are actual plans of much greater importance than his usual life in the dank oppressive atmosphere previously discussed; he "wishe[s] to annihilate the tedious intervening days", he "chafe[s] against the work of school" and cannot "call [his] wandering thoughts together". He gains purpose from his goal and feels self-important: for child's play was perfectly satisfying when the story opened, but now "the serious work of life which, now that it [stands] between [him] and [his] desire, seem[s] to [him] child's play, ugly monotonous child's play"--childishness is undesirable.

After all of the testing delay, Araby itself is an anticlimax. The bazaar is almost closed, and the building carries "a silence like that which pervades a church after a service"--the church simile is effective because of the previous references to the religious significance of the girl. If the service is over (the bazaar is closed), he has lost his chance to achieve his goal (bringing a gift for the girl). Having lost his purpose and "remembering with difficulty why [he] had come", he wanders about the stall with the young lady and and gentlemen as the realization that his "stay [is] useless" dawns on him. In the final paragraph, he suddenly understands that his entire motivation for coming was baseless and his self-importance was an illusion: he is "a creature driven and derided by vanity"--the vanity to believe, with religious fervour, that his desires were more important than all else.

It is interesting to note that the narrative establishes the boy's youth and immaturity by repeatedly emphasizing his confusion and angst: "I did not know whether I would ever speak to her", "my confused adoration", "already my heart misgave me"; the fact that the narrator is aware of the boy's follies suggests that perhaps the narrator is an older version of the boy who has grown and learned from the epiphany.