Araby Group

Question:

tupur
tupur
Student
College - Freshman

What is the significance of the title "Araby"?

James Joyce's "Araby"

Rate question:

Posted by tupur on Saturday October 10, 2009 at 10:30 AM and tagged with araby, joyce, symbol, title.

Answers:

  1. mwestwood
    mwestwood Teacher
    Community / Jr. College

    eNotes Editor

    James Joyce's story, "Araby" is the narrative of a boy who idealizes his love for the neighbor he watches from his window.  Through his glass of romanticized ideas, the boy ignores his "brown" and bleak, winter surroundings and perceives the girl as a maiden for whom he will venture on a "Holy Grail Quest": I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes," he imagines one day at the market.

    The word Araby connotes the exotic, the intriguing enticement of an imaginary world.  In the land of Araby, the land of spices, there are also dangerous snakes. In his essay, "Araby: A Quest for Meaning," the critic Freimarck writes,

    The very title of the story is the first of several images promising the apocalyptic world of romance, but containing the demonic.

    The boy follows his dream to its bleak conclusion: He has been deceived by his delusions.  The bazaar is filled with cheap goods and petty, gossiping people.  In his epiphany, he states,

    I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/araby/araby-quest-meaning

    Rate answer:

    Posted by mwestwood on Saturday October 10, 2009 at 12:18 PM


  2. kc4u Teacher
    College - Senior

    eNotes Editor

    On the surface, the title 'Araby' refers to a real occasion, an oriental fete being held in the outskirts of Dublin during Joyce's boyhood days. But in this story, the name 'Araby' signifies a land of romance and beauty away from the mundane routine of a city life. The boy's journey to the 'splendid bazaar' is initiated by the suggestion of Mangan's sister, the suggestion breeding in the adolescent mind a great excitement, a passion for the ideal, a quest as holy as that of an Arthurian knight.

    Mangan's sister asks the boy to visit 'Araby', and he promises to bring a gift for her. Ever since, his 'confused adoration' for the girl becomes an overpowering passion for the bazaar. The boy fancies to visit a land of heart's desire which doesn't exist in the real world. As he reaches 'Araby' very late at night, it is all dark and almost closed. He finds nothing exotic; he finds no gift worthy of buying for the girl; the boy discovers himself as deceived and ridiculed in the closing moment of a tragic epiphany.

    It is the duality of the significance of 'Araby'--the real 'Araby' and the 'Araby' of the adolescent mind--that relates to the title. The journey to Araby is a movement away from the 'blind alley' of urban life to a 'faery land forlorn' [Keats's phrasing in the 'Ode to a Nightingale'].

    Rate answer:

    Posted by kc4u on Saturday October 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM