The boy in James Joyce's "Araby" is an adolescent, probably 12 or 13, old enough to be "falling in love" for the first time, to be going to the bazaar by himself, to have developed the sensitivity he shows in the story. Yet he is young enough to still be playing games with his friends in the streets and, when seeing the girl of his fantasies, to hide and "watch her from our shadow peer up and down the street" (70). It is true that much of his sensitivity is articulated by the adult narrator with a skill and vocabulary the boy did not have at the time. The boy knew he was smitten, but only an adult would be able to put such feelings into the words of the story: "Her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood" (70). Nevertheless, the boy in the midst of his adolescence is clearly an intelligent, sensitive, romantic adolescent male confusing raging hormones with everlasting love. He is having emotional feelings which come with biological changes in the adolescent body, especially when stirred by sexual yearnings: "My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires" (70-71).
It is clear that the adult narrator has a deep affection for himself as a boy, and empathy for the innocent, if lust-driven, yearning he had for the girl, and for the sad and painful awakening the boy experiences. The sensitive but self-centered boy has turned into a sensitive and compassionate man.
The narrator uses romantic language to describe the boy's painful enlightenment, because the boy's romanticism is the cause of his pain, but the narrator does not sentimentalize either the boy's fantasies about the girl, or the "anguish and anger" (73) of his awakening. The narrator's poetic language accurately reflects the boy's lyrical nature, although, again, the adult narrator has writing skill and access to vocabulary the boy did not have. The narrator wants to depict the essentially romantic consciousness of the ...