Araby, James Joyce | David W. Robinson (essay date 1987)
David W. Robinson (essay date 1987)
SOURCE: “Narration of Reading in Joyce,” in Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 387–92.
[In the following essay, Robinson considers the imagery in “Araby” and its relationship to the narrator of the story.]
… Of the three opening stories in Dubliners, “Araby” presents by far the clearest framing of narrated events within the controlling viewpoint of a definite narrator. Here, finally, is a narrator whose relation to his early self can be confidently gauged and whose interpretation of the past has some claim to authoritativeness—or so it seems. A fairly consistent level of ironic detachment helps us locate the narrator, who then serves as a model for what we might think about the young boy's adolescent passion. Like the other two stories, “Araby” is largely about interpretation—reading—whether of the written word or of signs...
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