James Joyce's short story titled "Araby" tells how an unnamed young man encounters barriers to the realization of a fantasy and as a result recognizes the limitations that are likely to be imposed on his adult life. The question addressed in this essay is how Joyce uses a combination of symbolism and setting to evoke the ordinary nature of the narrator's life and the fixation of his fantasy - a mystical bazaar called "Araby" which is the object of his fascination and from which he finds himself virtually excluded. Just as the young man finally achieves entry to the bazaar, he realizes that he is "a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger" (Joyce, 4).
There are two distinct and discrete settings used by Joyce in the story. The first consists of the home in which the unnamed narrator lives with his aunt and uncle, described as "musty from having been long enclosed" and possessed of "a wild garden" (Joyce, 1). Located on North Richmond Street, the house is physically positioned on a "blind" and "quiet" street that is detached both literally and figuratively from the imaginative realm in which the narrator lives (Joyce, 1). The object of his interest is the eastern bazaar where he expected that he would encounter some amazing experience that would lift him above his ordinary life.
Symbolically, Joyce (2-3) juxtaposes the images of the emotionless home in which the narrator lives with that of the restricted convent where the young girl he admires will attend a retreat and the fascination he expects at the bazaar. Joyce (2) says that "the syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment over me." It is the antithesis set against the "serious work of life" that the narrator sees as "ugly monotonous child's play" (Joyce, 2). Frustrated in his desire to arrive in a timely manner at the bazaar, he learns that...