Araby

At first glance, James Joyce’s “Araby” might appear simply to be an emotional short story of a nameless boy in Dublin who has a typical crush on the sister of his friend. After all, the protagonist is infatuated with his neighbor’s sister and imagines himself heroically returning with a present from the bazaar, as if the word Araby “casted an Eastern enchantment” over his dull and changeless life. However, the enlightenment is a bigger theme that encompasses love. Once he arrives at Araby, he finds the bazaar dirty and disappointing. Two men are “counting money on a salver” as the protagonist listens to “the fall of the coins.” Moreover, the scene of the young lady, interested in two men who are flirting with her, shatters the “Eastern Ideal” that Araby once held. His love and his quest to the bazaar end as his blindness is stripped off by a sense of reality which was prevalent in Dublin 1910s. Thus, it is more accurately to assume that “Araby” is the story of a boy’s discovery of the disparity between the real and the ideal. Taking into account that such discrepancy was common throughout Ireland, “Araby” can also be in itself a portrait of the world that defies the ideals and dreams, soaking the newcomers with a bitter burst of reality.