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   kc4u Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   The boy in Joyce's story 'Araby' refers to early dusk and long winter evenings when he used to play with his friends in North Richmond Street & its adjoining lanes. 'Darkness' is iteratively mentioned as an aspect of the wintry urban setting.

   Just before his exchange with Mangan's sister, the boy refers to a rainy evening when, all alone in the upper part of their house, he listened to the sounds of sharp impregnating needles of rains. In the morning of the day of his proposed visit to Araby, he felt the air as 'pitilessly raw'. Waiting for the boy's uncle at night on that very day, Mrs. Mercer was also cocerned about sharp nocturnal weather.

   Almost all the time-references in the story seem to relate to the dark hours of evening and night:

   a) the boys playing in the winter evenings;

   b) the boy accompanying his aunt to the market on saturday  evenings;

   c) the showers in the evening hour;

   d) the boy's meeting with Mangan's sister;

   e) the boy in the hall downstairs, in the rooms above, and Mrs. Mercer gossiping in the hall--all in the evening, the evening making room for the night;

   f) the boy's journey to Araby rather late in the evening, and the ultimate darkening of the fair-site.

   Curiously enough, Joyce also uses the Christian symbolism of the 'chalice', and a passage from the winter to the spring, as it were from the time of Nativity to that of Crucifixion & Ressurection. The boy's journey to the dreamland of Araby converges with the Easter, although the journey of the boy , semblative of the Arthurian knight's search for the 'chalice', ends abortively.

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   Posted by kc4u on Wednesday October 7, 2009 at 12:28 PM