Universality of Main Character in "Araby"

"Araby" is one of the 15 short stories that make up James Joyce's Dubliners, and the story remains relevant outside of its time and place because of the universality of the main character, a boy of about 13 who is experiencing romantic love and sexual desire for the first time in his life. The object of his desire is a neighborhood girl of about 15 whom he hardly knows, but fantasizes about. He is as much - or more in love with the idea of love than with the actual object of his infatuation. The boy is filled with ideals and dreams that are shattered at the end of this brief story when he encounters the reality of life by undergoing an epiphany, a sudden revelation he experiences at a moment of crisis.

Although the story centers on the boy's experiences and awakening to the reality of his life, he is not the narrator. The narrator is the adult boy, and he brings a perspective to the boy's experience that contains more insights than if the narrator was the young, shy boy. In "Araby," the innocent boy is initiated into the shabby adult world.

The boy lives with his aunt and uncle in a dreary, poor section of Dublin. The boy's environment is a key to his romantic nature, and his need to find some beauty in the drab world he inhabits. The story opens with a description of the dead end North Richmond Street where the boy lives, and the street may be seen as a symbol of the emotional dead end he finds himself living in. The setting in winter when the boy's environment is even

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y's feelings are obviously driven by the raging hormones of adolescence. After all, the boy really knows nothing of the girl except the way she looks. When he describes her it is always with his response to her physical appearance. "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�." (133). The image of light is used in all the boy's descriptions of the girl "her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door" (131). The light is almost a halo, indicating the boy's mixing religious and romantic feelings. In his mind he turns this girl whom he barely knows into a kind of saintly princess. Caught up in the throes of first love and awakening sexuality, he is also driven by the need to transform his drab, empty life into something more wonderful. Of course, the intense idealistic and physical yearnings felt by the boy cannot be maintained in the face of reality, and reality comes crashing down on him when he makes the trip to Araby, the name of a bazaar held on Saturday nights. One day the girl finally speaks to the boy, asking if he was going to Araby. She can't go but hopes he can. He tells her he will go and bring

Category: Literature - U