Araby

For the unnamed boy narrator of "Araby," the eponymous bazaar represents a world of glamour, mystery, and fantasy, all the things that are missing in his humdrum, everyday existence. The boy lives...

In "Araby," Joyce uses the literary device of a subjective point of view, a technique favored among modernist writers. Readers experience the story entirely through the sensations and thoughts of...

The uncle's reciting of the poem can be taken a number of ways. First, his recitation of the poem is an indication of his absentmindedness. He can't seem to remember (or attach any importance to)...

This sentence shows that the narrator has an idealized and spiritualized view of romantic love. A chalice has several associations. First, it alludes to Catholicism. A chalice is a sacred vessel...

To the narrator, Araby symbolizes the beauty, mystery, and romance he longs for in his life. He lives in a dreary house on a shabby dead-end street. He escapes the drabness around him by reading a...

One could argue that the central conflict in “Araby” is between fantasy and reality. The unnamed narrator, a young boy living in a shabby-genteel part of Dublin, wants to escape from his everyday...

In this story's rising action, we are introduced to the young boy and his life in Dublin, as well as is his intense emotions for Mangan's sister, the girl he wishes to impress. As the story...

The narrator of "Araby" is written with a first-person perspective. The boy in "Araby" is a singular, first-person narrator. He tells the story from only his perspective, rather than including the...

James Joyce uses a number of literary devices in his short story, "Araby." A simile is the comparison of two dissimilar things that share similar characteristics, using "like" or "as." An example...

To add to the previous post, Joyce describes a garden with an apple tree at its center. This is where the children--including the narrator--play. This reference ties in nicely to the Garden of...

Joyce uses a first person narrative point of view in "Araby" to tell the story of a boy who learns that his romantic feelings for a girl are illusory. The boy's perspective is mirrored by his...

The young narrator, who lives a dull life in Dublin, dreams of the bazaar called Araby. The bazaar conflates or merges in his imagination with Mangan's sister, on whom he has a crush. Both...

An epiphany refers to a sudden revelation or insight, a moment of vision. In James Joyce’s “Araby,” however, the lovestruck narrator experiences a disappointment so intense and overwhelming that it...

Just to set the record straight so you don't leave this page believing a misconception about James Joyce, he was Irish, not English as I think coachingcorner writes. He is a cornerstone of...

The first words addressed to the narrator of this story by Mangan's sister, the object of his distant affections, are a query as to whether he is "going to Araby." Araby, she explains "would be a...

Upon arriving at the Araby bazaar, the unnamed boy narrator is devastated to discover that the place is closing down. This means that he won't be able to fulfill his Arthurian quest and buy...

To the narrator of "Araby," Mangan's sister represents romance and beauty. One might even call her his ideal of beauty, since he contemplates every aspect of her appearance and movement with a...

One of the key facts you need to realise about the relationship between the narrator and Mangan's sister is that it is almost non-existent. Remember that we never know her name, she is only...

In the short story “Araby” by James Joyce, a young boy is devastated when he is unable to fulfill his heroic quest and buy a gift for the girl with whom he is infatuated. The unnamed narrator and...

In Joyce's "Araby," the first setting is described in terms of figurative blindness and paralysis (the street is a dead end, etc.) This reflects the young narrator's emotional and mental and...

In James Joyce’s short story "Araby," the protagonist is a young boy who has a crush on a neighbor girl and wants to please her with a gift. This unnamed, first-person narrator is also attracted by...

Araby by James Joyce is one of the short stories from the Dubliners series in which Joyce explores various life stages or potentially transformative events which stand to change the lives or...

Throughout the story, the narrator is enamored of Mangan's sister. He watches for her through the mostly-drawn blinds, waiting until she appears on her doorstep, and then he runs "to the hall,...

Prior to going to the bazaar, the narrator is excited. He promised the young girl he thinks he loves that he would buy her something if he went to the bazaar. This only intensifies his feelings of...

The main characters in "Araby" are the narrator, an unnamed young man, Mangan's sister, and the uncle. The narrator The youth takes the reader on a journey of the mind as his perceptions, which...

The boy's late arrival at the bazaar called "Araby" is his uncle's fault. The boy can't leave for the bazaar until he gets some money. The adults in the story cannot understand the importance of...

To discern a moral lesson from a story such as "Araby," you would first need to think carefully on the core themes that are layered within the story. At the same time, it might be worth asking...

In "Araby," dark symbolizes the reality of life in Dublin. Light, in contrast, symbolizes the beauty of illusions and dreams. This symbolism is made more evident by analyzing the use of the words...

The narrator believed himself to be deeply in love with his friend Mangan's sister. He describes her as being bathed in light, literally, even when all around her seems dark. He had not even spoken...

The central idea of "Araby" is that at some point, we all lose our innocence and idealism and realize that our feelings are not special and that the world does not care about them. It's pretty...

In the end he realizes that there is nothing for him at Araby, and all his hopes about entering a romantic world beyond the quiet, decent, brown street of his childhood have been reduced to...

The boy's home is on a "quiet street" where the houses all have "brown imperturbable faces." The air inside is "musty," and one room is "littered with old useless papers." A priest, the previous...

The narrator feels nothing less than a complete childish infatuation with Mangan's sister. He views her with almost saint-like reverence, and indeed, the way she is described through the first...

The conflicts in the boy of "Araby" arise between his fantasy and reality. Discontent in his "brown" neighborhood, in his home that once belonged to a dead priest, living with his uncle and aunt,...

Its significance lies in the vision of an exotic world it conjures up for the story's young protagonist. This strange, exciting bazaar is suggestive of the mystical East, a far-off land full of...

Mangan's sister is the object of the narrator's affection and is unaware of the narrator's infatuation with her. She is associated with the Virgin Mary in the narrator's mind and is the focus of...

The narrator in "Araby" conflates (combines) his religious passion with his emerging romantic and sexual desires. Note that in the beginning of the story, he shows his interest in texts related to...

"Araby" reveals many details of life in Ireland that show the differences between it and the United States. As others have noted, the Roman Catholic church plays a large role in the life of this...

The boy in James Joyce’s short story “Araby” is characterized in a number of different ways, including the following: He grows up in relatively poor and unpromising circumstances, but he does not...

The dead priest makes just two appearances in James Joyce's short story, "Araby." The first appearance is in the second paragraph, where Joyce establishes the setting, specifically of the...

Norton's poem "The Arab's Farewell to His Horse" does not "shed light" on Joyce's story "Araby"; however it does have similar motifs of dreams and reality. In the story, the narrator's uncle is...

We are not told the exact age of the boy who narrates "Araby," but the story indicates he is at the cusp of a transition from boyhood to adolescence. He goes to school, he plays games with the...

"Araby" is part of the Dubliners series of short stories by James Joyce, who uses his own personal experiences in the creation of his characters and situations. Joyce makes his characters and their...

In James Joyce's short story, "Araby," there are almost countless numbers of literary devices/elements used. The first device is found at the beginning. Joyce employs personification, which is when...

The mood of a literary work is how it makes the reader feel. Mood is conveyed through setting, imagery, and word choice. This is not to be confused with tone, which is the author's attitude about...

After feeling excited about the prospect of going to the Araby bazaar, the unnamed young narrator ends up feeling thoroughly disillusioned and disappointed by the time he finally reaches his...