James Joyce (1882-1941)

Joyce’s fiction, particularly The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922) helped shape much twentieth-century literature, especially his use of an almost documentary realism and his psychological insights which he dramatizes through his pioneering use of the technique of the *stream-of-consciousness, a technique especially valuable for communicating the inner life of a character. Joyce also applied the religious term *epiphany to the sudden, illuminating experience of his main character. This concept involves the belief that there should somehow be a revelation or a sudden insight which may come to a character or to the reader or both, and that this insight will come through some symbolic action of the character.

“Araby” (pp. 91-95)

“Araby” is the third story in a collection of stories entitled Dubliners, a collection of fifteen short stories in which Joyce intended to portray the intellectual, moral, and spiritual paralysis that he felt pervaded modern life, particularly modern Irish life. The characters struggle with oppressive morality, restless desires, and frail gestures toward freedom. These stories contain no high drama or action-filled episodes. Instead, they are made up of small, quiet moments that turn out to be important in their characters' lives. Heroic action seemed remote and theatrical to Joyce, and he rejected the use of remarkable historic events in his fiction, preferring instead to focus on the everyday lives of ordinary people trying to make sense of themselves.

Most of the characters are on the brink of discovering something, such as loss, shame, failure, or death. Typically, the main character suddenly experiences a deep realization about himself or herself, a truth which is grasped in an ordinary rather than melodramatic moment. These moments when a character is overcome by a flash of realizations are what Joyce called epiphanies. Even the most commonplace experience might yield a spontaneous insight into the essential nature of a person or situation. Joyce's characters in these stories (and later in his novels) live quite ordinary lives of no significance. In fact, they seem to stumble onto significance when they least expect it.

The *point of view of “Araby” is that of an adult looking back on a maturing experience of his youth which occurred when he was perhaps eleven, twelve, or thirteen. At the beginning of the story the boy sees himself on a religious or spiritual quest. Mangan’s sister represents a kind of goddess or an angel to him, and he believes himself her protector and servant. The religious *imagery throughout the story indicates his grandiose view of himself and the significance of his quest to buy her a gift from the bazaar that she cannot attend. The imagery also suggests something about the absence of a spiritual vitality from Irish life, where religion is reduced to habit and empty ritual. Note the images of decay, emptiness, and the banal dialogue, whether it be the street sounds or the conversation the boy overhears at the bazaar, emphasizing the trivial, silly, and specious quality of Araby and the boy’s quest, both of which seemed to promise so much for him. Thus, one of the main contrasts in the story is between the banal and tawdry world of actual experience and the sensuous and romantic world of the narrator’s imagination, an opposition between reality and fantasy that continues throughout.

The final sentence constitutes the boy’s epiphany, when he realizes the absurdity of both Araby and his quest. The “blind” or deadened street on which he lived foreshadowed his trip to Araby, that is, both the street and the trip to Araby seemed to be leading somewhere, but in effect lead him back where he began. He realizes that he must give up both Araby and his quest and confront the truth of his existence. His eyes burn because it hurts to acknowledge that a false vision and hope has dominated his recent life. Now he must return home dreamless, but enlightened and more mature, with perhaps a commitment to himself to be more perceptive about life and more truthful with himself. Symbolically, the lights go out on the bazaar, on Mangan’s sister, and on his romantic vision.

A few references in the story might puzzle you. One of the books mentioned early in the story told the life of Vidocq, a legendary French detective. The Freemasons, members of a private fraternal organization, were viewed with suspicion by people with traditional religious views. A café chantant was a French coffeehouse with musical entertainment.